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Google’s “Backup and Sync” will stop working at the end of September

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Launched in 2017, Google’s Backup and Sync app was its way of tying your desktop computer or laptop into Google Drive and Google Photos so that you could, as the name suggests, back stuff up and sync the data on your devices. That application is now being retired in favour of a new “Drive for Desktop” app. Backup and Sync will stop working completely this year, and the rollout of the new Drive for Desktop app has already begun.

It’s probably not much of a surprise. Google’s cloud stuff is always “evolving” despite what a pain it can often be for its users and it’s already changed Photos around quite a bit lately. The new Drive for Desktop application offers a couple of perks over the existing app, although some are only available if you’re part of a team.

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YouTube now tells you immediately if your video failed copyright or monetisation checks

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I noticed something changed on my YouTube account a couple of months ago. It’s a new “Checks” feature, and it seems to have now rolled out on a wider scale. Essentially it’s a new step YouTube takes immediately after you upload your videos to check for any obvious monetisation or copyright issues.

It’s likely the same checks they’ve always done, except they’ve taken the status report from behind the scenes to right in front of the user during the upload process. It happens within a few minutes and means that you can publish your content sooner without waiting for unknown wait times for copyright and monetisation checks.

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Google trained its portrait lighting AI with 64-camera and 331-light rig

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Our phone cameras are getting better and better, and AI has been all the rage in photography lately. Google wants to bring AI lighting to your photos and help you relight your images after you’ve taken them. To train the algorithm, Google used an impressive rig with 64 cameras and 331 LED lights, and judging from the demos, the results are pretty awesome.

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New Google Photos storage rules could delete your Gmail and Google Drive files too

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Google recently announced they were killing off free storage for Google Photos from June 1st, 2021. A lot of people haven’t been happy with Google’s track record on moves like this, and have been seeking alternatives.

Many users assumed that any images already there would remain safe, but it seems not. Google has started emailing some of its Gmail, Drive and Photos users to let them know that their content may soon be deleted without warning or permission. Like the new Google Photos restrictions, these new policies also come into effect on June 1st, 2021.

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Google turns off automatic photo enhancements to stop you from feeling bad about your selfies

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Along with the Pixel 4a and Pixel 5 announcement, Google is making some changes to its photo editing methods. The company has introduced a design framework that will make photo filters and enhancements automatically disabled. This way your phone won’t make you “more beautiful” by default anymore, and it’s all a part of the efforts to improve your mental health rather than your selfies. [Read More…]

These creepy images were completely generated by AI from just photo captions

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AI just gets weirder and weirder. And creepier. Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI have published new research which builds on OpenAI’s GPT-3 machine learning tech to generate images from scratch based just on the captions of photos.

It’s kind of the reverse of what Facebook does when you upload a photo to the platform and it generates captions. Here, you feed it captions and it generates the photo.

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Google adds “Licensable” tag to images to help photographers sell them

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Google is launching a new feature that will make photographers really happy. When you specify license information for your photos, they will have the “Licensable” badge on the thumbnails in Google Images. This way, people will know that the image is available for licensing (and no, it’s not free just because it’s on Google). There will also be a link to license details in the Image Viewer, so people can learn how they can buy and use your photo.

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Google Lens can now solve your kid’s math homework from a photo

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Google Lens has a bunch of interesting and helpful features, from identifying your pets in photos to translating text from them. And now Google Lens is about to introduce a new feature that could be a double/edged sword. It could help your kid learn and understand math, but also do quite the opposite and just solve the problem for them.

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