Google's Ask Photos feature isn't available in Texas and Illinois (www.engadget.com)

Google has confirmed that Ask Photos — a Gemini-powered capability in Google Photos that lets you type or speak questions about your photo library — is unavailable to users in Texas and Illinois, and reports say Conversational Editing (natural-language image edits) is missing there too. Google told Engadget it’s "working to determine how to make Ask Photos available to more users" but gave no reason. Local reporting and legal context point to two big recent settlements: a 2022 Illinois class-action privacy settlement (~$200M) and a $1.4B Texas settlement this year, both tied to biometric data practices. Both Ask Photos and Conversational Editing rely on Google Photos’ "face grouping" (automated facial recognition) to cluster people in images, and state laws that require informed consent for biometric collection likely prompted Google to disable those features in those states. For the AI/ML community, this is a concrete example of how privacy and biometric laws can force geofenced feature rollouts and change product behavior. Technically, the dependency on face grouping means models and UX flows expect clustered identity signals; removing that input can degrade search accuracy and editing relevance or require alternative metadata. The situation underscores the need to design models and pipelines that handle absent/opted-out biometric signals, implement robust consent flows, and anticipate legal-driven constraints on data collection and feature availability.