Google I/O started today (18/05) and with it, many new features were announced for the Mountain View company's software suite, including Google Photos, which is getting a  people animation tool made with artificial intelligence. This is another feature that the app should suggest when it finds compatible photos for this montage.

The new effect is an evolution of the 3D photo emulation launched last year, in which the application could give an appearance of movement to an image, even if a person or pet was objectively static. With the new feature, when Google Photos detects two reasonably similar photos — taken very shortly after each other — it can create a very realistic animation.

The algorithm will use both records to detect what is most important in the scene — in this case, a person. From there, the mathematical calculation will be responsible for measuring the distance of the person's position in records 1 and 2. With this information, Fotos' artificial intelligence will then create an animation with movement, using synthetic frames created to fill the transition between the original photographs.

More refined collections and memories

This is another new feature that will appear over time in the app's memories, that is, it is independent of the user's desire to create these creations. In addition to animations, Google Photos should show — at the beginning of the second half of the year — better segmented collections and memories, since it can now better identify objects, colors, and other elements that may not be a priority in images, but that reveal a certain connection of meaning.

 

Signs that the app was already becoming more powerful came with recent collections involving bars, football fields, and others. For the coming months, the company promises other more traditional collections, such as religious and festive events, such as Diwali, Lunar New Year, Hanukkah and others.

Without crossing paths with what you don't want

Another new feature for those who like to browse through Google Photos' memories involves sensitive content in these retrospectives: an update has already started to be released that allows you to remove a specific photo from this content segmentation, or simply prevent people or pets from appearing in them. According to the company, this can help those going through a difficult time of separation, mourning, and transgender people to not revisit content they don't want to. This in a way that the backup on the service is not affected.

Google justifies the launch of these new features because “photos are a way of staying connected,” in reference to the Covid-19 pandemic. Another important piece of information that the company revealed when creating the new tools involves Google Photos’ numbers.

Four trillion never-before-seen photos

There are at least four trillion photos, screenshots, and selfies stored on the service — and they’ve never been revisited. Google Photos’ animation, as well as the new collections, end up being a way to bring these memories to consumers who wouldn’t normally search for them manually.

With a number of new tools announced, it is important to remember that very soon the service will no longer have free unlimited storage. The new features end up being attractive to those who will inevitably start paying for a storage service, and of course, the timing was well calculated.