https://blog.google/products/photos/google-photos-editing-features-availability/
The latest Google Photos APK hints that the AI-powered Magic Editor may become partially accessible without a Google One subscription.
For just local gallery purposes you can use Fossify Gallery (it's on Fdroid). For cloud storage, you can use Ente Photos (also on Fdroid).
Haven't used Ente but Immich gives you basically all the features of GPhotos, including the AI recognition ones.
How does the image recognition compare to Google Photos? I tried Damselfly gallery and its object recognition leaves a lot to be desired.
I've never really compared them but it works great.
When you upload the photos you can see the CPU spin up like crazy. I think that's because it's automatically tagging the photos with relevant terms. Because when you actually type in an object it's instant, where GPhotos can take a few seconds to do a search.
I suggest Immich. It has similar visual to Google photos, is self-hosted, has face recognition, mobile apps for autoupload, etc.
Hmm, from the website it doesn't look like it had a web app? Seeing my photos on my PC easily, and being able to share a gallery link to people is something I use.
So what we knew all along... It was possible to do these not-so-processor-intensive tasks on older pixels and other devices after all.
I hate that Google artificially limits these features to new phones. The only reason I've stuck with pixel this long is their call assistant to answer then decline spam calls without having to notifying me.
Additionally, all Google Photos users on Android and iOS will get 10 Magic Editor saves per month. To go beyond this limit, you'll need a Pixel device or a Premium Google One plan (2TB and above).
... Really?