GoKawiilMaybe it was a graduation or a big birthday five years ago. Or that one Mother’s Day surprise dinner, or that video from a Thanksgiving get-together with the extended family. Or maybe it was just a particularly good selfie with perfect lighting.
Precious moments can easily get buried deep in the depths of a camera roll, and finding that one pic you need right now can quickly devolve into a hunt-and-peck from hell. Search features native to smartphones can only do so much, and the way media is organized is often up to the whims of developers and mandatory updates.
Yes, you could type “dog” or “beach” into the image search bar in your phone‘s media and get a decent result, but what if you’re looking for a very specific image of that one time you balanced a shell on your dog’s snoot while at the beachside oyster bar?
Whether it’s locating pics of adorable outings or matters of utility such as screenshots of receipts, I put Google Photos’ AI-enabled search function to the test to discover if the tool really can help you find those images a lot faster.
Here’s how to use AI to manage and easily find your media.
Giving Google access
This might be the most painful part of the process, but it is well worth the annoyance tax. You’ll need a Google account and to upload your media to Google Photos, which, in my case, took a full evening. Blame it on the more than 5,500 videos and images I’ve collected over many iPhone upgrades. (You’ll be in a much better position if you have an Android phone and are already using Google Photos.)
Rachel Kane/CNET
Once the upload is complete, you’ll need to open Google Gemini AI and give it a prompt. Mine was a simple ask: Show me all the photos of my pets. Wherever you decide to start, this first prompt will kick off the permissions process, in which Gemini will open a new window and ask you to toggle on access.
Google will ask you to toggle access on. Screenshot by CNET
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