Generative AI comes to your Google Maps, Google Earth, and Waze: this is how it affects you

Google is clear on how to use generative AI to improve its geolocation and navigation applications. To do this, it will introduce its artificial intelligence, Gemini, into the company’s three most used apps in terms of navigation. And the idea is to enhance the experience when searching for something.

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Google Maps, Google Earth, and Waze will receive feature updates thanks to Gemini, although in some cases only with Google’s trusted insiders at first.

How Gemini affects Google Maps

At some point this week, if you use the Google Maps app for Android or iOS in the U.S., you should start seeing more detailed and contextual search results. Maps will now respond to conversational requests: during a demonstration, Google asked what to do on a night out with friends in Boston, and the app returned a series of results crafted by Gemini.

These results included categories of places -for example, cocktail bars- with summaries of reviews and user responses.

Regarding the reliability of the results, “we use the Gemini model to examine the facts and data we have in the map database, which includes data from our locations and reviews, and then we retrieve and respond, curate, and fact-check them,” explains Chris Phillips, Vice President and General Manager of Geo at Google.

This explained that the system will link and attribute third-party information, such as blogs, but that “when we answer the question about the details of the place and the facts about the place and the reviews about the place, the Gemini model is specifically looking into the datasets that we manage and operate and fact-checking there.”

Google says it has made it easier to explore secondary locations when planning a route, with suggestions for landmarks and other sites of interest available with just a tap of the “add stops” button.

At the end of a trip, Google Maps will start suggesting places to park and then switch to walking directions to your final destination, with augmented reality if you need it. This should be available to all iOS and Android users this week, according to Google, along with the ability to report weather disruptions and a more immersive view of 150 cities around the world.

And next month, Google will start adding more detailed information about lanes in some metropolitan areas.

Waze, now smarter than ever

Waze, now fully integrated into Google’s Geo division, continues to offer an alternative road navigation experience and will also benefit from AI-enhanced natural language processing with the addition of conversational reports.

In practice, this means you will no longer have to search for the right icon on your phone to report that tire in the middle of the highway or the traffic officer hiding behind a bush.

The feature, which will initially only be available to Waze’s trusted testers, allows users to verbally describe what they see and potentially ask follow-up questions.

Waze also said it is making it easier for map editors to add school zones to the map, and it will alert users when they are passing through one. This feature will arrive on iOS and Android later this year, according to Waze.

Google Earth

The improvements to Google Earth will likely be of greater interest to urban planners, although they will need to request access to the Google Earth trusted tester program, which will be launched for beta testers next month.

In this case, Gemini is being used to add complex searches like “map the five zip codes with the fewest electric vehicle chargers relative to the size of their geographic area.” After determining the answer, Google Earth creates a useful visualization, as you can see on the Google blog.