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Google began rolling out “personal intelligence” in Gemini early this year, giving AI subscribers the option of a more customized experience when using the company’s chatbot. Today, it’s using personal intelligence to tie its image-generation model to Google Photos. If you opt in, generated images will have access to your photos and associated labels to simplify prompts and produce more accurate AI images.
This change essentially streamlines an existing workflow. Google’s Nano Banana 2 is among the best AI image generators available, and it was already possible to feed it images of yourself or others to use as context for creating new AI content. Adding personal intelligence to the mix makes that process smoother by turning the image bot loose on the content of your photos, if indeed that’s something you want to do.
It is generally true that adding more personal data to an AI prompt results in a better output. Google offers a few examples of how connecting Nano Banana to Photos can help in this way. You won’t have to pack as much context into your prompts—you can just refer to “my family” or “my dog” to let the robot find useful images in your Photos library.
Perhaps you want a quirky family photo, so you type “create a claymation image of me and my family enjoying our favorite activity.” In this prompt, Gemini will rely on labels you’ve added to Google Photos to identify “family,” and the content of the images can inform its determination of a “favorite activity.”
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You could, of course, get a similar result by explicitly telling Gemini to include certain people doing a particular thing, but personal intelligence saves you from that extra typing. It reduces friction, and it could get people to use AI tools more often, which is Google’s ultimate goal.
Perfectly imperfect
Google notes that the new feature is still evolving, so it might not always choose the right images. If that happens, you may want to check the sources list to see what went wrong. It will list the images referenced in the prompt, and you can also ask Gemini in a follow-up prompt about the images it chose. Manually selecting photos with the plus button in Gemini can help address these shortcomings.
While Nano Banana 2 can now peruse your Google Photos library when generating an image, Google stresses that it’s not retaining that data for training. The distinction between using your data in a prompt and training AI with it can be confusing, but Google says it doesn’t use any images from your library in training. However, it does use the inputs (what you type) and outputs (what the model does as a result) to improve AI products. That can still include personal data about you, but it’s not the same as pouring all your photos into Nano Banana’s training data.
Regardless, the entire endeavor may still give people the creeps. The good news is that you don’t have to let Nano Banana into your photo library, even if you use it to generate images. Personal intelligence is off by default, and it’s currently only available to those on paid Google AI plans (the Nano Banana tie-in is available even for those on the budget Plus plan).
However, as we’ve seen in the past, AI features often start on the paid tiers before expanding to everyone with a Google account. Gemini is aggressive about asking users to enable personal intelligence, so you’ll probably see these popups in the future, even if you’re not paying for AI. Personal intelligence also connects Gemini to Gmail, YouTube, and other Google services, but you can decide which ones are allowed when you set it up.
Ryan Whitwam Senior Technology Reporter
Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he’s written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards.
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