Google Photos now lets you search for text in photos you've taken.

Google has made a subtle announcement today on Twitter: it is deploying new artificial intelligence features for its Lens platform that will allow you to search your Google Photos library for text that appears on photos and screenshots. You can then easily copy and paste this text into a note, document, or form.

The two new features use a technique known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), the Copy / Paste option reinforcing Lens's existing ability to understand and extract the text contained in photos, whether it's 'a screenshot or a photo. a physical sign or document. according to 9to5Google, this feature is now available on some Android devices, although it still does not seem to be active on iOS. You may already be able to search for text in your photos using Google Photos on the web.

Google positions the Goal feature as a way to easily grab a confusing Wi-Fi password, but it can also be used to capture any part of a photo's text or screen capture on a case-by-case basis. your Google Photos library. The most impressive feat, however, is the ability to search for a snippet of text without having to choose a photo beforehand. This suggests that Google automatically performs OCR on your entire photo collection.

"Starting this month, we are deploying the ability to search for your photos based on the text they contain," says Google. written in response to the eminent capitalist Hunter Walk, who had noticed earlier this week that the Lens function had been activated on his behalf. "Once you have found the photo you are looking for, click the Lens button to easily copy and paste text. Take this, wifi password impossible. "

Features appear to be related to those announced at Google's 2017 I / O Developer Conference. At the time, CEO Sundar Pichai celebrated a new feature allowing the AI ​​camera to understand the context of a photo. In this way, you can point the camera of your smartphone at the router's password sticker and automatically connect to Wi-Fi through the software that reads the password and understands that you want to connect to the network.

Since then, Google Lens has added the ability to search the web for photos of menu items, add contact information for a business card to your address book, and many other OCR-related tips. But these new features of Photos look like a larger scale deployment of artificial intelligence technology. This is the case for the entire library of the user to make it searchable and allow you to extract this text from photos.