Google's AI-Powered Photo Features Face Restrictions in Texas and Illinois

Google's Ask Photos feature isn't available in Texas and Illinois

One of Google's Gemini-powered photo features is MIA in Texas and Illinois. The company confirmed to Engadget that Ask Photos is currently unavailable in the two states. It didn't say why. Google Photos' Conversational Editing is reportedly missing in those states, too. "The ability to ask Photos to edit your images is not available to users in Texas and Illinois at this time," Google's statement to Engadget reads. "We are working to determine how to make Ask Photos available to more users." As for why that is, we don't have confirmation. But the Houston Chronicle, which first reported the news, pointed to a pair of lawsuit settlements as a likely culprit. In 2022, Google settled an Illinois class action suit over Google Photos data privacy concerns for $200 million. Earlier this year, it settled one with Texas for $1.4 billion over collecting user data without permission. The common theme in both settlements was biometric data collection. Lo and behold, both of the missing AI features require "face grouping" to be turned on. That Google Photos feature uses automated facial recognition to cluster pictures of the same person. The tricky part comes when state laws require informed consent for data collection. 9to5Google notes that only the photographer -- and not the many subjects of their pictures -- have typically agreed to Google's terms and conditions. That creates a head-spinning legal conundrum that could have easily led Google to play it safe. Ask Google Photos lets you type or speak queries about your picture library. For example, you could say, "What are all the cities I visited last year?" or "Show me the best photo from each national park I've visited." Meanwhile, Conversational Editing lets you tweak images using natural language. It launched with the Pixel 10 series in August and expanded to other Android phones in September.

Google confirms 'Ask Photos' isn't available in some states, and face grouping might be to blame

Google's AI-powered Ask Photos and conversational editing features are a large part of the Pixel lineup and other Android devices, but some reports say the features are missing. It might have something to do with Google's "face grouping" function. Some users in Illinois and Texas are discovering that Ask Photos in the Google Photos app is missing in their state. Similarly, it appears conversational editing is missing, too. According to a report from the Houston Chronicle, Illinois and Texas seem to be the two states losing out on Google Photos' AI functions. A number of affected users reportedly noted that they meet every stipulation Google sets for users in order to get access to Ask Photos. The same requirements extend to Google's conversational editing, which lets you discuss your edit ideas and leave it to Gemini to do the rest. Those requirements include being over the age of 18, residing in the US, and having face grouping enabled. Face grouping, however, is a tricky thing that may be the cause of Google's missing Ask Photos tool. It's an opt-in function that allows Google Photos to store facial geometry data in order to identify and group matching faces together. It's used to find and label faces in phone galleries. It sounds creepy, but it improves the user gallery experience with features based around familiar subjects. Conversational editing relies on it to enhance people's faces based on past images, and Ask Photos uses it to identify those people in its results. Google's selectively missing Ask Photos relies heavily on face grouping to answer contextual queries about users' galleries, and the contextual editing tool needs face data to edit photos with reference to existing face groupings. Face grouping seems to be such an integral part that it seems feature can't be used at all in regions that have such stipulations. Face groups are not available in Illinois and Texas, Google has stated. When the Houston Chronicle reached out to Google, it was met with this blanket statement: The ability to ask Photos to edit your images is not available to users in Texas and Illinois at this time. We are working to determine how to make Ask Photos available to more users. Google makes it clear that Ask Photos isn't available in all regions on its help page for the feature. Users are then directed to the above requirements. Texas settled a lawsuit with Google brought up in 2022 regarding face groups. Another lawsuit in Illinois claimed that Google violated the "Biometric Information Privacy Act," since the tool did not inform users directly of their biometric data being stored. That's difficult because when images are captured, they're generally not taken by the subject in the photo. The faces stored are often not of those who could agree to the terms and conditions; therefore, Google couldn't reasonably ensure individuals knew their data was being stored. Illinois and Texas seem to have standing policies that Google's face grouping tool still doesn't meet. Google also notes that users must enable "location estimates" to use the features. Even if face grouping is enabled, as some users have confirmed, Google can still block Ask Photos if the device is recognized to be in certain states or regions where it's been blocked from storing biometric data. An absence of Ask Photos and conversational editing isn't the first occurrence of Google Pixel and Android users met with missing cornerstone features. Varying privacy policies in Europe and Canada have left users without. As AI has become a larger part of the company's product suite, that seems to happen more often.