By Ken Colburn
Publication Date: 2026-02-08 12:02:00
Feb. 8, 2026, 5:02 a.m. MT
Question: Why is Google Photos AI search so bad and can I turn it off?
Answer: If searching your photos — and especially your videos — feels worse than it used to, you’re not imagining it. Many users can no longer find pictures or clips they know are there, even though the same searches worked perfectly fine in the past.
The issue isn’t that your content disappeared; it’s that Google Photos changed how search works — and not in a way that always matches how we remember things.
From keywords to confidence scores
Google Photos used to behave like a filing system. If a photo had location data, dates, or simple tags, search would show it — even if the match wasn’t perfect.
Today, search is driven by artificial intelligence that tries to interpret what’s actually in your photos and videos. It looks for faces, objects, scenes, text, and activities, then…
