Google Photos may soon be able to automatically generate coming-of-age movies or slideshows and receive a variety of other notable additions and improvements, a recent teardown of the latest build of the app revealed. The Alphabet-owned company started rolling out the Google Photos version 3.3 on Tuesday and the service should soon be available for download across the globe, if it isn’t already. The teardown of the app revealed some strings of code referencing movies about children growing up, suggesting that Google developed or is close to developing a feature that’s similar to a number of other Google Photos services powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that the company already introduced in recent times.
The functionality itself will seemingly ask users to select photographs of them or another person that span a long period of time — with the app’s facial recognition support set to assist them in that task — and Google Photos should subsequently generate a collage of such images in an effort to create a coming-of-age clip. The relevant code found in the 3.3 build of the app isn’t completely indicative of the format that this particular feature will accept; photographs will certainly be selectable to be included in the auto-generated movie, though it’s currently unclear whether short video clips will also be eligible. Based on similar functionalities that were previously added to Google Photos, users can likely expect the end result to be a short slideshow of images accompanied by predetermined music and some simple visual effects. Initial reports suggest that a number of users already started seeing the feature in action, though some proof of these claims has yet to emerge online.
The latest version of Google Photos also indicates that the service may soon be updated with support for selective automatic image backup, essentially allowing users to modify the behavior of the backup feature of Shared Libraries. Finally, the newly uncovered code shows evidence that Google partnered with Indian wireless carrier Airtel in order to provide users with the option of performing Google Photos backups during the mobile service provider’s nightly “happy hours” in an effort to keep their data costs as low as possible. On the user-facing side of things, the latest version of the app adds the “Select” command to Shared Libraries and also ships with a dedicated notification settings section which should facilitate navigation.
