New photo storage solution Monument is just like Google Photos — except you own it

Your photographs are important — but so is memory on your smartphone. Monument hopes to save you the trouble of negotiating between the two with a private storage option that can sync all of your photos across devices.

Monument’s private storage and sync options aren’t new, but the device also uses artificial intelligence (AI) to sort your photos using date, time, location or people in the images. You can search for topics like “beach” or “Nate” to filter results.

The app also has features you might already use. It can identify faces, the location you took the photo and distill image results based on the device you used. It also offers a ‘Time Machine’ feature that shows you what you were doing on that day up to ten years ago.

In addition to syncing photos using the cloud, Monument also supports Wi-Fi and SD cards for file transfers.

Monument is also scalable; you add your own external storage drives (which link via USB) to suit your needs. If you like, you can even make one drive a RAID-1 backup, or back up to a secondary Monument drive.

A small pocket in the rear of the device is meant to house drives, but you can simply link Monument up to any external drive you may already use.

Its Kickstarter campaign will let you grab a Monument for as little as $79. The team is currently planning to ship the device this Fall.

While other options can do the whole ‘store your files and sync to devices’ thing, Monument’s AI is the real hook. It’s a lot like Google Photos, except you’re in complete control.

➤ Monument [Kickstarter]