At Google I/O last week, Google announced several new features for photos including 'Auto Awesome' and 'Auto Enhance.' The company also announced that Google+ is now able to select the best photos for you based on tons of data points, such as facial recognition and smile detection, as well as landmarks. However, did you know you can also use Google's visual recognition to help you search for photos in Google+?
For example, say I want to send my brother pictures of all the motorcycles I was eying up at a convention last year. Going back through all my auto-upload photos would take forever. With Google's new search feature, I can type in 'motorcycle' in the search bar and Google will spit out all the photos it can find relating to that term. Same with ocean, food, wedding, beer, cat, dog, dessert. Google spat out great results for all of them.
The feature isn't perfect. For example, a search for 'cars' showed me a ton of photos of cars that I have taken, but also a couple of rogue photos that shouldn't have been in there at all (such as a shot of a Ted Baker tablet sleeve). That said, it is still pretty impressive and while certain searches are easier than others, the accuracy is a little bit frightening. Take the 'vacation' search, as an example. Google can determine a lot of vacation snaps based on the location they were taken and comparing them to where you usually live. Still, when I plugged that term in, Google thought I might also like to see photos of when my family came to visit last summer. I didn't go anywhere, but Google knew enough to label these as holiday photos. Creepy.
