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Comment by PStamatiou | Hacker News Reader

What is happening on the Photos team? I know a lot of the core team has left already, but lately it really seems like they are cramming in AI functionality in a way that does not consider the whole experience and it truly feels bolted-on. First they tried to mess with regular search and had to leave in a setting for people to go out of their way to disable it.

Google Photos used to be one of my most favorite apps. Now it's some testing playground. I'm sure some new startup is approaching this area so the cycle can repeat.

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> lately it really seems like they are cramming in AI functionality in a way that does not consider the whole experience and it truly feels bolted-on.

"They" could be just about any major software vendor as of late, it's hardly specific to Google.

Apple is avoiding it more somewhat, but perhaps more due to being behind on the tech itself

Are they? I just took iPadOS 26 and it wouldn't shut up about all the new AI stuff

You have to compare it to another device to see what I mean. Also they talk about features a lot but not a lot of features actually exist

For real, even Lowes is doing this crap. I tried looking up a some products on their website with my phone the other day and every product page is now partially obscured by a useless AI widget that can't be removed. They've made their product categorically worse just to check the AI box.

Remember when FB really took off, and places like Lowes tried to make their site be a "social hub" too? Like you'd add your friends there and follow their shoppings or whatever

> but lately it really seems like they are cramming in AI functionality in a way that does not consider the whole experience and it truly feels bolted-on.

I feel that everywhere, not just Google. Windows is probably one of the most egregious with copilot being jammed into every app.

None of this "AI" stuff feels integrated or even thought out at all. The whole thing is just bolted on and it feels like the only reason is so they can say "see, we have AI too! Now give us money" to investors.

> Windows is probably one of the most egregious with copilot being jammed into every app.

Seeing copilot shoved into Notepad of all things was probably the worst

And they took away the one editing feature I use the most -- the perspective correction tool. I take a lot of photos of documents, and to avoid shadows I often can't take the photo from above, so used to use the perspective tool to square up the document.

I use zero of the new AI tools, but they took away the one tool I really want.

They claim they'll bring it back...sometime.

"Perspective tools – Our team is working to restore these"

OMG they took that too?

Simple cropping is difficult, now.

On my pixel fold, it undoes zooming, when cropping, making fine crops impossible.

I've complained into the ether, and even the Feedback feature is broken. The screenshot part shows a black screen. It's a nightmare of regressions.

Lately they also shrunk the image preview, now it's like 60% of the phone screen estate - good look hunting for details while editing. I don't think, change my mind, that they care about real users feedback.

Managers on AI projects need to show "mass adoption" in order to survive the next annual review. That's why you have pointless AI stuffed into every orifice of Google/YouTube.

Well if you do not inject AI features how will you gather data that comes from its inputs?

All this is an attempt of feeding more and more data to AI to make it as strong as possible.

If photos used your pics for training you can claim "i don't use any ai feature then why my photo is sent to ai"

Now that everyone has ai by default you cannot make that claim

This is all of Google ever since the "Red Alert" when ChatGPT came on the scene. It just took a glacial 3 years for it to come to fruition like everything at Google.

> Google Photos used to be one of my most favorite apps. Now it's some testing playground.

we have entered a new epoch: The Ensloppocene

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