Search engine giant Google is working on a powerful AI assistant that will be able to tell the life story of users based on their personal information.
The report comes from CNBC, which details a new Google project called “Ellmann”, which will use AI to create a “birds-eye” view of users’ lives using mobile phone data such as photographs and searches.
Project Ellman pays homage to the biographer and literary critic Richard David Ellmann. According to a copy of presentations viewed by CNBC, Project Ellman will use the newly announced Gemini AI model’s capabilities to process search results, identify patterns in user photos, create a chatbot, and “answer previously impossible questions” about users. Hence, the objective of Ellmann is articulated as being “Your Life Story Teller.”
This AI assistant will most likely be integrated with Google Photos since that is the default photo gallery option that comes with every Google account. Billions of people use Google Photos to back up their photos and it includes more than 4 trillion photos and videos, according to a company blog post.
During a recent internal summit, a product manager from Google Photos introduced Project Ellman alongside the Gemini teams. The teams dedicated the past few months to establishing that large language models (LLMs) are the optimal technology for realizing this comprehensive approach to narrating one’s life story.
According to the presentation, Ellmann aims to enhance contextual understanding by incorporating information from biographies, past events, and subsequent photos, providing a deeper description of a user’s photos beyond mere “pixels with labels and metadata.”
The project envisions the capability to identify specific life phases such as university years, Bay Area years, and years as a parent.
Ellman will also be capable of deducing a child’s birth using information from someone higher up in the family tree. The presentation says: “This LLM can use knowledge from higher in the tree to infer that this is Jack’s birth and that he’s James and Gemma’s first and only child.”
A Google spokesperson told CNBC: “Google Photos has always used AI to help people search their photos and videos, and we’re excited about the potential of LLMs to unlock even more helpful experiences. This was an early internal exploration and, as always, should we decide to roll out new features, we would take the time needed to ensure they were helpful to people, and designed to protect users’ privacy and safety as our top priority.”
