Google has resumed the rollout of its AI-powered “Ask Photos” feature in Google Photos after a pause. The company is also making some updates to how it works.

Google announced the “Ask Photos” feature last May at I/O 2024 and positioned it as AI-powered feature within Google Photos that would let users search their photo library using natural language questions, similar to how you would ask another person.

With Ask Photos, users can submit various queries such as “Show me the best photo from each national park I’ve visited,” or “What themes have we had for Lena’s birthday parties.” The idea is to let users search their library beyond relying on keywords, dates, or location details.

At the time, the company said that the feature uses a special version of Google’s most advanced Gemini AI, built just for Ask Photos.

As reported by The Verge, Google paused the rollout of its AI-powered “Ask Photos” earlier this month, with the Google Photos product manager saying on X (formerly Twitter) that the tool “isn’t where it needs to be in terms of latency, quality, and UX.”

However, in a blog post published on Thursday, Google announced that it is rolling out Ask Photos again, and that the tool should now perform faster for simpler searches.

“We love seeing how you’re using Ask Photos in early access, like asking ‘suggest photos that’d make great phone backgrounds’ or ‘what did I eat on my trip to Barcelona?'” the company writes in the blog post.

“Ask Photos uses Gemini models to answer complex queries like these, but we’ve also heard your feedback that it should return more photos faster for simple searches, like ‘beach’ or ‘dogs.'”

To do this Google says it is combining the speed of the old Google Photos search with the power of their new AI tool Ask Photos to create a smoother, faster experience.

“To address this, we’re bringing the best of Photos’ classic search feature into Ask Photos and improving latency, so you can get fast help with simple and complex queries in one place,” the company writes You’ll now see results right away while Gemini models continue to work in the background to find the most relevant photos or information for more complex queries.

Google says that the Ask Photos feature is now “opening up beyond early access” and will start to roll out to more “eligible users” in the U.S.