How Google Photos Became a Perfect Jukebox for Our Memories

Sure, inanimate machine learning, AI, algorithms are doing incredible things nowadays. But I want to add a helpful serving of salt to moderate any tech journalist's hyperbole or sensationalized fears, however mild, about the impending doom of terminator style robots and AI. If you truly understand how the tech works, then you will realize that we are likely centuries, if not more, away from ever producing sentient artificial beings. AI at the moment is great at taking a ton of data, crunching through it and finding ever more complicated patterns and manipulate them to the point that it feels like intelligence. It is not. It is good at doing these easily modeled tasks, such as recognizing faces, etc. But AI tech is no where close to the point where it can even equal a 5 year old's level of reasoning and logic and ability to interact and learn. So, please ignore the alarm bells raised by even the likes of Elon Musks. It will take many more generations, if ever, for AI to reach that level of intelligence. (And we may even destroy our climate and civilization before that ever happens, so cheers!)

I don't know why Farhad is so impressed by the recommendations. I personally feel they are boring and very near the quality of the recommendations Facebook used to throw at me which he calls 'tone deaf'. Otherwise, Google photos works as advertised. Maybe Google improved their alogrithms now, but no thanks.

So much hate and miss-information in these comments. Google isn't looking to take your photos for evil plans, come on... I agree with this author, its been awesome having my ios auto backup all my photos never to be lost, and compiling amazing memories of my first child as we roll through this first year of life. I like him, take tons of photos almost everyday of her, and even take it further by creating a album that feeds all the best memories/shots of her into my TV's Chromecast devices across the house. Fear not, tech can make life better and does not always need to be feared.

It might be perfect except Google’s terms of service give Google a perpetual, royalty free, world-wide license to use your photos for any money making purpose and to share them with third parties, even after you request your data be deleted or close your account.

First: The author wrote that "mindlessly taking photos reduces our ability to recall events in the world around us." I have mixed feelings about this. I've done photography since I was a child -- back in the day when you had to pay for film and developing. What I learned to do was -- unless I was doing candid photography of people, when I'd already have my camera at the ready -- to put it away and *pay attention* to what was going on around me. Second: I don't trust any company to preserve, sort, or organize the precious photos that I've taken. It's so easy for a company to (as some commenters have pointed out) simply shut down a service or (as Verizon/Flickr have done in the switch to SmugMug) cut your free photo storage in half and require you to pay $50/year unless you remove as many as half your photos. I suggest that everyone keep their own copies of photos on an external hard disk and make a separate backup that you keep somewhere else. (I understand that may be tough to do on many phones and tablets these days, but I think it's worth the effort.) You can also store the photos in The Cloud, of course. But this will give you a fallback in case the proprietary system you use becomes unreasonable or unavailable. For the same reason, I'd suggest NOT using software on your computer that you have to buy or rent. Simply copy the photo files into a series of folders under standard tools like Windows File Explorer or Mac Preview. And do those occasional backups!!)

Good article and some good early warnings too about AI. Do you recall hearing how many indigenous peoples thought that a photo taken of them would steal their spirits? Well, I think the same thing happens to the taker as well as the taken. When I used to be a news photographer, I was more than somewhat confused when, in social non-work situations, I would catch myself framing friends' faces. Once I ended that career, I started seeing things as they are. Now I usually don't take any photos of people or landscapes. I prefer to have them remain in my memory, even though they get altered (Photoshopped!) by time.

While I appreciate the technology, it is creepy handing over intimate photos so willingly to a company in which part of its revenue is generated from advertising. One never knows where those photos may end up, especially if there is a security breach.

The writer has not proven to me that he understands how memories work. As others here have stated, this just seems like a commercial for a shiny new toy.

I am reluctant to use Google's assorted software products unless they are well established, documented and solid. Google offered Picasa for years and many users became dependent on it, and then Google dropped it. Replaced it with Google Photos, which does not provide editing. Google acquired NIK software, offered it for free, and many users tried it and liked it, and then Google dropped it (sold it to OxO, which licenses it without documentation). Google makes attractive offers (Google Drive, Google Photos), but provides little or no documentation and makes capricious changes. How can anyone rely on these software products from Google in the first years? After a few years of "field trial", Google does produce amazing products (e.g., Google Maps, Google Earth), but relying on initial products is risky.

"How Google Photos Became a Perfect Jukebox for Our Memories" This sounds so much like a paid commercial that I can't bring myself to read it.

In fairs and circuses from a long gone era, in the hands of peddlers, there were trinkets of all types which evoked a certain magical response within you. Now at long last, in a very different era and for a very different reason, Google Photos meets that criteria - using it and going back to it is evoking that 'certain magical response' within you. [ I am not sure how many or if any can relate to this. But I had to write down that response within me. ] Kudos to NYT for focusing on an 'innocent and appealing' feature of a new age app instead of focusing on its techno features and functionality.

Talking about "secure", let's see what Farhad has to say when Google sunsets the service like Reader, Inbox, Plus, ... (the list of defunct services continues) before, and his memories, if at all salvageable, become an unstructured zip archive, the digital equivalent of the shoe box. If you don't pay, you are the product.

"Photos is remarkable for what it portends about how we may one day understand ourselves through photography." This guy must have been born yesterday.

Google, if you're listening: Please bring back the wonderful "Auto Awesome" feature. It really did make our photos awesome, automatically. Please bring back GIFs in movies. We love our automations but want to include them in our movies without converting them to movie files via some workaround. We love Google Photos and upload religiously.

This is pathetic. Thoughtless people who give away their privacy to the tech giants for some convenience and emotional manipulation. Try more actual interaction without a screen between you and your loved one. You are a source of profit for these companies who know more about you and your family than you do. I bought my first Android phone a few months back and I'm aghast at how intrusive Google is in every function. And that was before the news broke that despite the fact that I, and many others like me, turned off location tracking and did our best to maximize our privacy, Google nonetheless tracked our movements and have that information stored on their servers. I will never use a tech giants cloud storage for anything personal. Don't even get me started on those in-home spy devices oxymoronically called smart speakers, etc.

Agreed. Google Photos is fantastic. I'm hooked. It recognizes objects as well as people and pets. I can tell it to show my my photos of mountains or bridges or anything and it instantly complies.

Yes, how Google Photos shapes your memories is one concern that the author articulates well. However, astoundingly, he never brings up the issue of PRIVACY, how Google and its advertisers might use the info in these photos -- info about your lifestyle, info about who you interact with. A huge oversight when considering a service like Google Photos, or anything Google!

Photography is a trick we play on ourselves that ends of stealing our humanity. When I go to use my iPhone camera with my year-old child (which I've done fleetingly), it makes me instantly aware that I've done something bad — I've put a machine between me and the boy. Our interaction changes, as he becomes distracted by the new that that glows brightly, and I've become distracted by the act of photographing instead of simply being with my child. I've been a "creative professional" and "photographer" for over 25 years, and have seen how the cameras and computers I've obsessed with have become harmful to me, society, and children. Do we really benefit from taking tens of thousands of photos and videos? Do we extract a terrible ecological price to manufacture & maintain the computer rabbit holes we've occupied? Maybe a better way to capture photos is to ask a friend to take photos of you once in a while, so you can focus on your time with your child, and let a helper capture some digital "memories." Only the person and the present is real... the screens and images are industrial products, playing their tricks.

Google photos has become the go-to tool of our entire family to manage and share our everyday moments, from birthdays, vacations, to anniversaries, and first days of school, etc. The tool and its features have made the mundane tasks of uploading, sorting, editing, and sharing so much easier and more manageable. Can the tool be further improved? Absolutely, we wish Google photos give users more control in creating and editing the movies, spot fixing still images, selecting the source photos for making animations or arranging photos for collages, etc.

This article did not comment on how Google handles things that are very relevant to memory and photography, but may be outside of AI's ability to handle well: divorce, death, perhaps a bad relationship...

Thanks, Mr. Manjoo, for this. You've shown how one more AI technology is taking from us the authorship of our own stories. The next time Google Photos creates a photo montage for you, be careful that the musical accompaniment isn't "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do./I'm half crazy all for the love of you." That may make you cry but perhaps for an entirely different reason. New technologies like Google Photos are "shaping our reality in the deepest way possible," a devastating statement when you think about it. The more AI becomes involved in our lives, the less we seem to notice it, the more normal it becomes, the less we question it. As we cede more and more of our personal lives to machines and software, the less we seem to need our own brains. Everything gets done for us. Our photos can be improved at the touch of a screen, then organized into a narrative with musical accompaniment, and we can pretend we did it all ourselves. Again, thank you for this piece. Perhaps I've overstated the concern with AI, but I fear for our futures.

I use Google photos ferociously and love it. On a recent once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa my spouse and I took 22,000 photos, thanks to digital SLRs. When we returned we created an African Animal Alphabet for our grandson and other albums reflecting the high points of the trip - maybe a total of a couple thousand of the best pictures, all stored by topic. We also have thousands of pictures of our grandchild, also curated into albums and easily accessible. Whenever I am tired of reading the news and have reached the end of the internet I flip into Google photos and relive treasured moments. It is a gift that is always there. For those with children and grandchildren, we also recommend Tiny Beans. A website where you can post a picture or two of the baby growing day by day, which is sharable. For grandparents who live remotely it is a wonderful way to enjoy the growth and development of the child. We almost exclusively post telephone photos, good for capturing those great moments. Again, treasured memories. Thank you technology!

I agree with the author...Google Photos is one of those pieces of technology that has made me go "wow!" I like when Google Photos shows me little animations of my dog, or has made making a photobook super easy.There are concerns about privacy and AI, but Google Photos have come up with some things that have made me smile, and enjoy the pictures that I've taken.