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Google Photos is choosing your happiest pics for a ‘Smiles of 2017’ video

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As the curtain comes down on another year, you might be taking a moment to swipe through your photos from 2017, enjoying (hopefully) happy reminders of the friends you met, the places you went, and the things you did.

Looking back on the year has prompted Google to offer users of its Photos app a Smiles of 2017 video, which uses A.I. to pull together all of your images that feature, you guessed it, smiles. Or at least, what its algorithm perceives to be a smile.

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The slideshow video lasts around 50 seconds and features music from Google’s own library. Of course, if you like it you can save and share it, too.

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First spotted by Android Police, the auto-generated Smiles of 2017 videos have so far been appearing in Photos for a limited number of users — it might depend on how many images you have with toothy grins!

Anyone receiving the Smiles of 2017 video from Google should get a notification. But in case you want to check for yourself, just tap on the “Assistant” tab in Photos at the bottom left of your smartphone display to see if it’s available. If it’s not, give it another look before the year’s out.

Google has rolled out auto-generated videos for Photos before. First introduced in 2016, the so-called “creative concepts” have included Summer of Smiles and Special Day that also use algorithms to select the appropriate images.

If you can’t wait for a Smiles of 2017 video to appear in your Photos app and you’re keen on creating your own, then it’s simple to do. Just hit the “Assistant” tab, select “Movie” from the listed choices that appear, and then tap on as many as 50 of your favorite images. Once you’re done, tap “create” at the top right and let Google do the rest.

Hit the “play” button and enjoy the memories, and if you don’t like Google’s selection of music, you can choose something from your own library by hitting the music note icon, located at the bottom center. Likewise, if you want to remove any images, add news ones, or change the order in which they appear, tap the film strip icon, bottom right, and carry out the edits there.

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Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
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