How Google Photos Became a Perfect Jukebox for Our Memories
Google Photos, introduced in 2015, has become one of the most emotionally resonant pieces of technology today. It is also shaping our narratives along the way.
The first time Google Photos made me cry, it was with a sucker punch.
I had looked at my phone one morning in April, expecting more news of global woe. Instead there was an alert from Photos, letting me know that Google’s image-processing robots had created some kind of montage from my videos. I had seen such A.I.-produced clips before — Facebook’s tone-deaf year-in-review montages are a recurring blight — so I was not expecting much. Then I pressed Play and within 30 seconds, I was a crumpled, weepy wreck.
The montage was of my 5-year-old daughter, Samara, whose nearly every waking moment has been thoroughly and permanently memorialized by me, her camera-obsessed father. My obsession has created an archival nightmare; videos and pictures of Samara and her older brother, Khalil, both born in the time of smartphones, now span several terabytes — more images than any human might ever have time to meaningfully review. What, one might ask, was the point of capturing all these moments?
