Google Maps is heading in a new direction with artificial intelligence sitting in the passenger’s seat.
Fueled by Google’s Gemini AI technology, the world’s most popular navigation app will become a more conversational companion as part of a redesign announced Wednesday.
The hands-free experience is designed to transform Google Maps into something more like an insightful passenger, able to direct a driver to a destination while also providing nearby recommendations on places to eat, shop, or sightsee, when asked for advice.
“No fumbling required — now you can just ask,” Google promised in a blog post about the app makeover.
The AI features are also designed to enable Google Maps to be more precise by identifying landmarks to indicate where to make a turn, rather than relying solely on distance notifications.
AI chatbots, such as Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have occasionally lapsed into periods of generating false information — known as “hallucinations” in tech speak — but Google promises that built-in safeguards will prevent Maps from accidentally directing drivers down the wrong road.
All the information that Gemini is drawing upon will be culled from the roughly 250 million places stored in Google Maps’ database of reviews accumulated during the past 20 years.
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Google Maps’ new AI capabilities will be rolling out to both Apple’s iPhone and Android mobile devices.
That will give Google’s Gemini a massive audience to impress — or disappoint — with its AI prowess, given that the navigation app is used by more than 2 billion people worldwide.
Besides making it even more indispensable, Google hopes the AI features will become a showcase that helps give Gemini a competitive edge against ChatGPT.
Prodded by OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Google has been steadily rolling out more of its own technology designed to ensure its products continue to evolve in response to the upheaval being unleashed by AI.
The changes have included an overhaul of Google’s ubiquitous search engine, which has de-emphasized the listing of relevant web links in its results and increasingly highlighted AI overviews and conversational responses provided through an AI mode.
