Google Maps Meets Gemini: Hands-On With New AI Tools
Google Maps is finally entering its Gemini era. Hi, I’m Lexi. Welcome to your Weekly Dose of All Things Mobile. A special edition brought to you from the Google Street View Garage. This is where Google builds and tests a range of different hardware that it uses for street new, but we’re not here to look at that today. This is all about how A I is coming to Google Maps. Waze and Google Earth. Let’s run down some of those features coming to Google Maps. You’ll soon be able to ask a pretty specific query within the search bar of Google Maps itself. For specific recommendations on things to do. You can be pretty granular with a query such as things that I can do at night in Boston was one of the demos that we saw here today. And what that’s gonna do is using Gemini in the background to kind of a a lot of different data on restaurants and activities. Anything that you might wanna do based on that particular query, it’s gonna give you some contextual data based on your specific queries. So say, for example, if it’s a Saturday night, it’s probably gonna recommend things like restaurants and bars. You can also go in, look at all of that detail that you normally would see like that star rating and so on. But further down on that search query page, you are gonna see extra information that you can ask Gemini and then it’s gonna provide that to you. So you can go even more granular and ask, is it a quiet atmosphere that this bar in particular has? And it’s gonna look through all of those human generated Google reviews to find that information for you. I got to see this in action in a demo and speak to the VP and General manager of Google Maps to see how it all works. So you could just say, you know, what can I do in Seattle this weekend and knowing that it is October, it might recommend fall activities for you to go. Do you can go on fall foliage drives? You can go pumpkin picking. So you know, here again, there is a very broad intent about what can I do in the fall in a place like Seattle? And it is bringing you something very contextual. One of the big questions that you might have about how this all works is how Gemini is going to deal with potential hallucinations and also how it’s going to be determining the difference between real and fake reviews. Seeing as those are coming from user generated content, we take the output of the Gemini models. And we go one extra step, we call it grounding the billions of pieces of information we have in maps to almost fact check those answers. So the information you actually see in this experience, you can be confident that that place exists in maps. When we say the atmosphere is lively or it has outdoor seating, that’s because we have looked through all of the reviews that people have written about that place very recently and confirmed that that is factual coming to Google Maps is A I planning. So when you’re uh planning your trip, you might go to add a stop and it’s gonna be coming up with different suggestions for places that you might want to make a stop at, say for example, a restaurant or a scenic spot. And there’s even more detail coming to the driving experience. So there’ll be now specific lane markings that you’ll be able to see as you are doing that navigation as well as street signs and other lane and road markings, say like zebra cross and then once you’ve completed your journey or you are just about to find that place to park. Google Maps is gonna be proactively giving you recommendations and places that you could stop the car, say at like a parking lot and then help you actually walk to where you are trying to go and provide recommendations on the correct entrance. So that might not necessarily be the actual address. It’s gonna be using data to determine. No, actually, maybe you should just go around the corner. This is the actual entrance that you can go through. Also coming to Google Maps, you will now be able to report weather disruptions. So things like snow, fog and a stormy conditions and don’t feel like you’re left out if you’re a waves user because you are gonna get some natural conversation abilities. There’s something ahead. Can you describe what you see? It’s a mattress on the road? Art Che du road reported. This is coming to the trusted testers program and then rolling out later after that, Gemini is also coming to Google Earth. So you’ll be able to use it to perform some pretty granular requests to perform data visualizations. Say for example, you’re in urban planning, you wanna look at like the ideal places to put say ev charges within a radius of where they don’t normally exist or within the radius of hotels, supermarkets and so on. You’ll be able to add that request into Gemini and it will give you that result on Google Earth interface. Something really important to note though is that these Gemini integrations into both Google maps and Google Earth can only currently be invoked from the interface itself. So you’re not going to be able to say open up Gemini on your Android device or talk to Gemini live and ask for these queries that will then hook into the Google Maps or Google earth interface that is by design A to, to ask that question. But for now, if you do wanna make use of this, you’ll have to do that through the actual apps themselves. As for the other features, the A I inspiration with the Gemini in Google Maps that is coming to IOS and Android users starting to roll out this week. And the other arrival in guidance information is coming to global users over the coming month. The exploring along the routes, weather guidance and the arrival notifications to give you that extra guidance to where you’re finally trying to go is rolling out globally starting this week. And the enhanced navigation that we saw is coming to 30 metro cities across the US starting this month. So this really feels like the start of an era of integrating Gemini into other Google products. However, I am somewhat surprised that you can’t tie into say the Google Maps experience or Google Earth from Gemini itself. There’s a lot more features to dive into. So stay tuned, you know, I’ll have lots more coverage coming your way in the coming weeks. In the meantime, go and update your apps, check out the features. Let me know what you think about them down in the comments and I’ll see you next time. See ya.