Forget Christmas. Early December is officially recap season.
What began with Spotify Wrapped a decade ago is now an industry-wide trend, with almost every brand trying to cash in on some of that free publicity. Some of the more bizarre examples include online bank Monzo telling you how many times you’ve logged into the app, or Nectar updating you on where you sit in the satsuma buying rankings at your local Sainsbury’s.
However, there was one that I was particularly excited for when it popped up last week: Google Photos Recap. As someone who takes thousands of photos and videos every year and relies on Google Photos to sync them across all my devices, I couldn’t wait to see what fun insights it had in store for me.
Sadly, I was met with a useless 90-second clip that didn’t reflect my year in any meaningful way. Come on, Google, you can do better than that.
Impressively bad photos and videos
Throughout 2025, I’ve taken more than my fair share of bad photos and videos and never deleted them. I’m also aware that there isn’t someone at Google whose role it is to hand-pick only the finest takes from my camera roll. But despite these caveats, some of the choices for my Google Photos Recap are mind-boggling.
Surely even the dumbest AI should be able to recognise when a photo is out of focus?!
To help illustrate this, let me take you through a sequence of images that it decided to highlight:
- An AI-generated image I was sent on WhatsApp
- A blurry picture of my laptop screen
- A glass of cider at a gig
- A blurry image of the headline act at the same gig
- Brochure download instructions for a tourist attraction
- A picture of earbuds from a keynote presentation
- The outside of an event venue (zoomed in so you can barely make out what it says)
- My dad (not blurry, but not properly in focus, either).
I don’t expect the algorithm Google uses to be perfect – it won’t always know which photos mean the most to me – but this haphazard selection is diabolical. Surely even the dumbest AI should be able to recognise when a photo is out of focus?!
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
The theme continues throughout the video. Aside from a few exceptions, Google managed to either include an irrelevant ‘memory’ or pick one of the worst photos I took of that situation. Impressive.
The algorithm isn’t totally useless. I took hundreds of photos of smartphones for my Tech Advisor reviews, yet it was able to ignore every single one. Unfortunately, it seems as though photos of signs and blurry images are Google’s kryptonite.
It seems as though photos of signs and blurry images are Google’s kryptonite
Where’s everyone else?
At their core, photographs are digital memories. And most of the time, it’s the people we’ve spent time with that make it so memorable.
However, for some reason, there was barely any focus on the people I shared photos with in 2025. After highlighting my 387 selfies (for camera testing, of course…), it brought up only me and my mum’s dog as my ‘faves’.
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
Okay, so they probably appear more in my camera roll than anyone, but what about everyone else? Even off the top of my head, there are several great photos with family and friends that I’d love to see included.
Bizarrely, the algorithm seems to prioritise inanimate objects over humans and other animals, making the recap feel functional and boring.
A distinct lack of substance
The lack of other people in my Recap is symptomatic of the video as a whole. It’s missing almost anything that would make me look back on the year fondly, despite there being literally hundreds of suitable photos.
Its current structure, throwing in a couple of stats, a few people and a random assortment of photos and featured locations, makes it a total mess.
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
Recap appears to be slightly more interesting in the US, where customers with Gemini features enabled can also highlight “standout hobbies” and “top highlights”, but I doubt that’d deliver the scale of improvements that I’m craving.
Google Photos Recap has massive potential, and it’s one of the few Spotify Wrapped imitators that I’d like to see continue. But in its current form, the feature is woefully undercooked and more frustrating than fun.
Apparently, you can “Relive your Recap all month long”. No thanks, Google, once was already too much.
YouTube’s video version appears to be much more interesting, but you might not get it.
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