Google Photos' New Memories Are Private AI-Curated Stories

Google has pushed out an update for Google Photos, adding a new 'Memories' feature that creates galleries with content from past years to highlight memorable moments. This feature is similar to the videos generated by Facebook and select other social media platforms, offering a brief look at the best parts of a particular time period, such as the previous year, as well as memorable events.

The new Memories feature arrived in Google Photos today, presenting users with a gallery featuring videos and images from their personal media — and, unlike the ones generated by certain social networks, these memories are entirely private. The galleries include date and destination for the included media; they're curated by machine learning.

Because memories aren't so sweet if they happen to include certain moments or people, Google says that users can hide specific time periods and/or people to make sure they're not included in the generated galleries. As well, users who aren't interested in Memories can entirely turn off the feature.

The Memories are appearing in Google Photos starting today; users can find them located at the top of the app's Gallery. The system selects high-quality images and avoids duplicates, enabling users to quickly swipe through the best photos while ignoring all the low-quality shots that were automatically backed up.

Google notes that users can also now search for particular photos based on the text located within the images — for words located in a picture of a sign, for example — as well as for certain events, such as searching for 'birthday' in order to see all the images that were captured at birthday parties.