14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is working on another major update for the Photos app, and it looks like the company is already experimenting with a bunch of new features that are more or less inspired from Apple’s and Google’s products.
A report from WindowsCentral reveals that Microsoft is currently testing a smart search feature that relies on artificial intelligence to identify people and objects showing up in the photos, thus automatically creating groups that filter photos by faces, months, colors, and things.
Features like these have already been implemented in photo apps on rival platforms, including Apple’s and Google’s, and Microsoft is clearly trying to bring its own solution in line with what others are offering.
The Windows 10 Photos app is at this point well behind alternative solutions, and although it slowly evolves from a basic image viewer to a more advanced product, updates continue to land at a rather slow pace, most often with new OS updates.
AI running locally
With the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, the Photos app will bet big on AI, and what’s important to note is that Microsoft won’t use cloud power for the features mentioned above. Instead, all the magic will be performed locally, which means that an Internet connection is not even required.
The Photos app will include a face detection feature that will automatically identify people and create several groups for each individual, a thing that Apple rolled out last year in iOS for its iPhone users. In typical Google fashion, Photos will also create labels for things that are detected in images, with the search feature automatically indexing all files at the first run.
Microsoft will offer options to block naming and group of people in photos and videos, so face detection can be disabled, but the company expects the majority of users to keep it enabled on their devices.
The intelligent image search should become available for all users in September. The source says the feature arrived in the Photos app with version 2017.35063.13610.0 that was released to the Release Preview Ring, but it’s not yet available for the Fast ring just yet.
