Standby mode keeps "Finding Featured photos"

Running iOS 17 on iPhone 15 Pro. I can get into standby mode just fine. But when I swipe to photo mode, it just keeps "Finding Featured photos". I can swipe up/down from there to switch to cities/nature/people and can also add album of my choice to display in standby mode. It's just not displaying featured photos even though photo app has memories and featured photos displaying/shuffling fine. All photos are local on my phone and I do not backup to apple's iCloud. Anyone has this problem?? I had tried resetting phone (volume up, down, power button till apple logo) and turning off/on on all toggle functions in photo and standby settings. Only thing I haven't tried at this point is resetting phone settings. I would hate to do that and have to set up everything all over again.