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Google is pausing the rollout of its AI-powered “Ask Photos” feature within Google Photos, which has been slowly expanding since last fall. “Ask Photos isn’t where it needs to be,” wrote Jamie Aspinall, a product manager for Google Photos, in a post on X responding to criticism, citing three factors: latency, quality, and user experience.

The experimental feature is powered by Google’s “most capable” Gemini AI models. Specifically, it’s a specialized version of its Gemini models that are “only used for Ask Photos,” according to Google.

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Aspinall said Google had paused the feature’s rollout “at very small numbers while we address these issues,” and that in about two weeks, the team would ship a better version “that brings back the speed and recall of the original search.

At the same time, Google also announced Tuesday that keyword search in Photos is getting better, allowing you to use quotes to find exact text matches within “filenames, camera models, captions, or text within photos,” or search without quotes to include visual matches too.

Google announced the feature last May at I/O 2024, and positioned it as a way to query your Photos app for common-sense questions that another human would typically have to help with — i.e., asking about which themes you’ve chosen in the past for a child’s birthday party, or which national parks you’ve visited.

“Gemini’s multimodal capabilities can help understand exactly what’s happening in each photo and can even read text in the image if required,” the company wrote in the announcement. “Ask Photos then crafts a helpful response and picks which photos and videos to return.”

It’s not the first time Google has paused the rollout of an AI-powered feature, as it competes in a quickly intensifying AI arms race against other tech giants and startups alike.

Last May, within weeks of debuting “AI Overview” in Google Search, Google paused the feature after nonsensical and inaccurate answers went viral on social media, with no way to opt out of usage. Two high-profile examples: The feature called Barack Obama the first Muslim president of the United States, and recommended users put glue on pizza to keep the cheese on.

And last February, Google rolled out Gemini’s image-generation tool with a good deal of fanfare, then paused the feature that same month after users reported historical inaccuracies, such as an AI-generated image depicting the U.S. Founding Fathers as people of color.

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OS 2.0 is now available for the Teenage Engineering EP-133 KO II synthesizer. | Image: Teenage Engineering

Nearly a year and a half after it first launched the EP-133 KO II synthesizer in late 2023, Teenage Engineering has released its first major software update. The OS 2.0 update, which can be downloaded to the synth through a web browser or installed using a USB cable, includes features like creating new samples from existing samples or beats, hands-free sampling while playing another instrument, and the ability to layer and play more sounds simultaneously.

You can see all of the new features in the OS 2.0 release notes, but the most significant update appears to be new resampling capabilities that let you process or add effects to existing samples to create brand new ones. The update also allows you to create new samples by capturing snippets of a beat made up of previously recorded samples. The KO II is also getting a new hands-free sampling mode letting you record the sounds from an instrument that requires two hands to play – like a piano – without requiring a third hand to press record or stop on the synth.

Teenage Engineering has also increased the number of sounds that can be layered and played simultaneously on the KO II from 12 mono and six stereo to 16 mono and 12 stereo with OS 2.0 installed. Other upgrades include a new song mode that “adds the ability to chain scenes and create longer, more structured track arrangements,” and sidechaining that “allows one sound to control the volume of another.” So the volume of a bass drum in a beat can be automatically lowered whenever the sound of a kick drum plays so it’s not drowned out.

The $299 KO II falls somewhere in between the company’s $59 Pocket Operator synthesizers and its expensive but highly-capable $1,999 OP-1 Field. It’s positioned as a sort of advanced musical toy, but musicians might now find it a more capable song-making tool with OS 2.0.

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