Google Photos will now scan your camera roll and build you a digital closet, no manual tagging required.
The feature, inspired by the digital wardrobe app from the movie Clueless, uses AI to identify clothing items in your photos and organize them into a virtual closet. It first rolled out to Android users in June as a limited test. It's now broadly available on both Android and iOS, letting anyone browse their own clothes as a searchable, swipeable catalog.
This is Google mining photo libraries for a use case beyond memories and search. Fashion apps have tried to get people to manually photograph and tag their clothes for years with limited success, because the friction of building the catalog yourself kills the habit. Google's approach skips that step entirely by working off photos you already took for other reasons, which is a more realistic bet on how people actually behave.
The catch, as always, is that a more complete inventory of your closet is also a more complete inventory for Google to hold. A manual wardrobe app only knows what you bothered to log. Google Photos already knows.