At the last Google I/O 2017, the search engine giant unveiled its intention to integrate machine learning and computer vision into the Google Photos app. The addition of this technology dubbed Suggested Sharing will automate the process of sharing photos between users.
The new technology will rely on face recognition technology to identify people in a recently shot picture. Then ask the owner of the photos for review before sharing the picture with people within the photo.
In a nutshell, say you take pictures of you and your friends while out on a Friday night. Usually, the friends (captured in the photo) will ask you to share with them later on, but more often than not, we tend to forget to share the picture.
Now with Suggested Sharing integration in Google Photos, the app will recognize the people in the photo using facial recognition technology, and automatically share the pictures with them. The sharing only takes place only with your explicit permission allowing the app to share some photos in your gallery with people in your contact list. You will have to review the picture before the app automatically shares them out.
Google just recently unveiled this technology and already (as reported by 9to5Google), Google Photos is already prompting users to help the integrated AI system to recognize the people in their photos collection. Users get this prompt while using the web platform for Google Photos; the mobile app is yet to get the update.
The web version of Google Photos now has a welcome screen that prompts users to ‘Personalize Google Photos by choosing your face.’ Google Photos (web) displays eight faces in a grid, asking you to recognize ‘your’ face. This process helps Suggested Sharing distinguish you from the rest of the people in the photographs.
It also comes in handy in a new feature being built on Google Photos where you can query for pictures of ‘me.’ That is pictures that have you in them, sorted out from all the pictures in your gallery.
