Google has announced a brand-new feature for Google Photos that will actually add colour to black and white pictures.

Using advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the new Photos app will recognise if it’s looking at a picture in black and white and then suggest whether or not you want to add colour.

Tap ‘colourise’ and your smartphone will add colour to the image, instantly.

What’s happening here is some pretty complex machine learning, the smartphone and Google’s operating system is using its knowledge of having seen millions and millions of colour images and then intelligently guessing where the colours should go in your picture.

To a lesser degree, Google Photos will also make intelligent suggestions if it notices a picture is too dark.

It’ll also use facial recognition to notice if you’ve taken a number of recent pictures of a person and then ask if you want to send them that picture.

Finally, Photos will add some impressive new colour edits to your existing colour images.

It will notice if your picture has a single person in it and then will recommend removing the background colours for more visual impact.