00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: We might be entering a new era for Google Photos.
00:03 – C. Scott Brown: And it’s all thanks to AI and XR.
00:05 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:06 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown and this is the Authority Insights Podcast where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.
00:15 – Mishaal Rahman: Those of us who have been using Google Photos for years, we’ve done it under the assumption of we implicitly trust Google Photos with safeguarding our thousands, tens of thousands of photos that we upload, because it’s a cheap, mostly free, very reliable service from one of the biggest tech companies in the world. And we’ve done it under the assumption we know we’re giving Google Photos all this data and we know they’re going to use it for training their variety of machine learning features. But, there’s been a separation between the features that they’ve been showing us so far and the features that they’re showing us now that are hugely generative AI based, and the difference between the features they’ve been trained on before and the difference with the features we have now is astounding.
01:00 – C. Scott Brown: It’s clear in a lot of ways that Google is basically trying to play catch up in some of its Google Photos offerings, with the face retouching figures that we’re going to talk about in this episode. But in other ways, we’re also treading new water with the image and video capabilities within Photos. And some of these are inevitably going to be controversial while others are pretty mind-blowing. They’re actually going to be pretty cool, I think. And I’m especially excited for one of them which is going to be XR support within Google Photos. So you’re going to be able to be able to put on a headset and relive your precious memories, in an immersive VR style environment. This was a game changer for the Apple Vision Pro and it’ll be great to have people who maybe don’t want to be in the Apple ecosystem have something similar on an Android XR powered headset that apparently is coming soon.
01:59 – Mishaal Rahman: Apparently, yeah, apparently next week is when Samsung’s going to be announcing their Moohan. But before we get to the XR stuff, what other features is Google going to be announcing for photos that doesn’t require shelling out multiple thousands of dollars for a brand new headset to actually enjoy?
02:17 – Mishaal Rahman: The first new feature we wanted to highlight in this episode is a new enhancement to the highlight videos capabilities that Google Photos announced back in 2023. For those who don’t know, back in late 2023, I think in October, Google introduced a feature that allows you to create these highlight reels from your photos. And the way it works is it uses AI, because of course it did, but back then we didn’t have the kind of AI that we do now. But it had, it used AI nonetheless to create reels of people, places, or activities that you’ve done in the past. You would go to Google Photos, and then you would select this option to create a highlight video, and what it would do is it would allow you to select people, places, or activities you’ve done, and then you could give it a name and then it would use AI to stitch those clips together into this highlight reel. And then after it’s done, you had the option to rearrange the clips or trim them or adjust the music that it’s synced to the video before you actually publish it.
03:19 – Mishaal Rahman: But now it looks like Google’s working on an enhanced version of this feature where instead of selecting people, places, or activities, now you can select these templates that allow you to stitch together whatever photos are recommended or that you select and have it follow this templated video content. And some examples we found are fall vibes, a trip recap, and hobbies. And then it also has some clip options, some music options that you can select from including not just some royalty free stuff, but also some licensed music including Naughty by Nature by Hip Hop Hooray and Breathe by Michelle Branch. So it’s an interesting feature that Google is adding here. If you’re watching the video, we’re playing a video feed right now from the Android Authority article that shows we uncovered this inside the APK what it might look like and yeah, it’s quite a different take on the highlight video capabilities that we used to have in Google Photos. So Scott, what is your take on this feature?
04:22 – C. Scott Brown: Well, first, this reminds me very much of a feature that has been available from DJI products for quite a while. So if you buy a gimbal or even the DJI Pocket series, the Pocket 3, which is for creators, one of the most important pieces of gear that you can own. There are ways where you can shoot these clips, it’ll give you instructions. It’ll say shoot this clip and then shoot a clip like this and then shoot a clip like this. And when you do all those clips, it stitches it all together, puts some music track on it and then you can very quickly upload it to your social media feed of choice.
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