During its keynote speech at Google I/O 2017, the search giant announced that it was further extending the use of machine learning and computer vision in the Google Photos app. It announced a handful of substantial new features, including one that automatically recognizes the face of individuals in a set of recent photographs and prompts you to share the collection with them.
This feature is called ‘Suggested Sharing’ and has already started making its way to a handful of users — or at least Google Photos has started preparing for the roll out of the said feature soon enough. The said feature looks as shown in the render image attached underneath. It takes the pain out of photo sharing by building collections of recognized people and asks you review the same before sending them to the concerned individual.
As spotted by two major Google-focused publications Android Police (and 9to5Google), Google Photos is now prompting users to help the company’s AI system recognize who they are in their photograph collection. This notification is presently being shown on only the web platform for Google Photos, the apps haven’t received the said update as of yet.
The welcome screen of the web platform has been replaced with the prompt, which reads ‘Personalize Google Photos by choosing your face.’ It displays eight faces in a grid and asks you to recognize your ‘own’ to make it easier for the smarts integrated into the app to search for ‘me’ wheneever prompted to. The option to search for yourself in the Google Photos app is also expected to make an appearance in the app soon enough.
It, however, also lays ground for the ‘Suggested Sharing’ feature that will be made available to Google Photos’ users in the coming weeks. And if the system recognizes you then it’ll know when to suggest your contacts to share your images with you. This is being appended with a new privacy control window – Contacts – where you can control who all may receive suggestions to share with you based on the face group you’ve labeled.
This is one of the exciting features debuted at Google I/O 2017 and comes alongside Shared Libraries and physical Photo books that add to the persona of your home. So, have you received the welcome prompt yet? Comment down below.
