Hello and thank you.
I can confirm that the album is completely empty on the google photos website and an
$ rclone ls gphotos:album/my_album/
shows it as empty. After executing the command it creates a duplicate that even says "Uploaded by rclone" in the more info section of google photos.
Here is the log of running the copy command. After running it I had the duplicate again
2021/12/15 15:04:06 DEBUG : rclone: Version "v1.57.0" starting with parameters ["rclone" "copy" "gphotos:media/all/IMG_0523.HEIC" "gphotos:album/my_album/" "-vv"]
2021/12/15 15:04:06 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "gphotos:media/all/IMG_0523.HEIC"
2021/12/15 15:04:06 DEBUG : Using config file from "/home/user/.config/rclone/rclone.conf"
2021/12/15 15:04:06 DEBUG : Google Photos path "media/all": NewObject: remote="IMG_0523.HEIC"
2021/12/15 15:04:06 DEBUG : Google Photos path "media/all": List: dir=""
2021/12/15 15:04:20 DEBUG : Google Photos path "media/all": >List: err=<nil>
2021/12/15 15:04:20 DEBUG : Google Photos path "media/all": >NewObject:
2021/12/15 15:04:20 DEBUG : fs cache: adding new entry for parent of "gphotos:media/all/IMG_0523.HEIC", "gphotos:media/all"
2021/12/15 15:04:20 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "gphotos:album/my_album/"
2021/12/15 15:04:20 DEBUG : fs cache: renaming cache item "gphotos:album/my_album/" to be canonical "gphotos:album/my_album"
2021/12/15 15:04:20 DEBUG : Google Photos path "media/all": NewObject: remote="IMG_0523.HEIC"
2021/12/15 15:04:20 DEBUG : Google Photos path "media/all": List: dir=""
2021/12/15 15:04:33 DEBUG : Google Photos path "media/all": >List: err=<nil>
2021/12/15 15:04:33 DEBUG : Google Photos path "media/all": >NewObject:
2021/12/15 15:04:33 DEBUG : Google Photos path "album/my_album": NewObject: remote="IMG_0523.HEIC"
2021/12/15 15:04:33 DEBUG : Google Photos path "album/my_album": List: dir=""
2021/12/15 15:04:34 DEBUG : Google Photos path "album/my_album": >List: err=<nil>
2021/12/15 15:04:34 DEBUG : Google Photos path "album/my_album": >NewObject:
2021/12/15 15:04:34 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Need to transfer - File not found at Destination
2021/12/15 15:04:34 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:34 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: >Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:34 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:34 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: >Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:34 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Open:
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: >Open:
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: >Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: ModTime:
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: >ModTime:
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : Google Photos path "album/my_album": Target remote doesn't support streaming uploads, creating temporary local FS to spool file
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "/tmp/rclone-spool1694172142"
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Sizes identical
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : Google Photos path "album/my_album": Put: src=IMG_0523.HEIC
2021/12/15 15:04:36 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Update: src=IMG_0523.HEIC
2021/12/15 15:04:39 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: >Update: err=<nil>
2021/12/15 15:04:39 DEBUG : Google Photos path "album/my_album": >Put:
2021/12/15 15:04:39 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:39 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: >Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:39 INFO : IMG_0523.HEIC: Copied (new)
2021/12/15 15:04:39 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:39 DEBUG : IMG_0523.HEIC: >Size:
2021/12/15 15:04:39 INFO : IMG_0523.HEIC: Copied (Rcat, new)
2021/12/15 15:04:39 INFO :
Transferred: 5.675 MiB / 5.675 MiB, 100%, 1.419 MiB/s, ETA 0s
Deleted: 0 (files), 1 (dirs)
Transferred: 3 / 3, 100%
Elapsed time: 33.3s
2021/12/15 15:04:39 DEBUG : 6 go routines active```