This article was published on May 17, 2017

Google’s new Photo Books uses AI to make printing your pictures dead simple


Google’s new Photo Books uses AI to make printing your pictures dead simple

Google Photos is coming to the real world. At its I/O keynote today, Google announced a new Photo Books feature, which is exactly what it sounds like: it lets you print physical picture albums from your Photos app.

But this is Google of course, so AI is involved. Rather than simply letting you pick and choose images (which you can nevertheless still do) Photo Books is able to automatically create photo albums based off of your best images. After all, one of the biggest hurdles to printing images is the menial work of curating and properly formatting images.

Think of it like Photos’ automated photo collages and albums, just brought to the the real world.

You can currently choose from just two options, a 7-square inch softcover book with 20 pages for $10, or a 9-inch square hardcover for $20. That’s pretty limited, especially compared to a proper printing services like Shutterfly, but that’s not the point – Google is aiming for convenience. It’s also possible the company will add further options down the line – I’d love it if it could integrate its AI photo selection with existing printing services in the future.

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