Google Maps adds AI features to help users explore and navigate the world around them

Google Maps is heading down a caller roadworthy steered by artificial intelligence

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Google Maps is heading down a caller roadworthy steered by artificial intelligence.

The displacement announced Thursday will bring much of nan revolutionary AI exertion that Google already has been baking into its ascendant hunt engine to nan integer maps work that nan net institution launched astir 20 years agone arsenic portion of its efforts to grow into caller frontiers.

Google Maps precocious surpassed 2 cardinal monthly users worldwide for nan first time, a milestone that illustrates really limited group person go connected nan service’s directions during their regular commutes and excursions to caller places. With nan preamble of Google’s AI-powered Gemini technology, nan maps are now being group up to go intermezo guides successful summation to navigational tools.

Starting this week successful nan U.S. only, users will beryllium capable to converse pinch Google Maps to inquire for tips connected things to do astir circumstantial spots successful a vicinity aliases metropolis and person lists of restaurants, bars and different adjacent attractions that see reviews that person been compiled done nan years. The caller features will besides supply much elaborate accusation astir parking options adjacent a designated destination on pinch stepping directions for a personification to cheque aft departing nan car.

“We are entering a caller era of maps,” Miriam Daniel, wide head of Google Maps, told reporters Wednesday during a preview of nan features presented successful Palo Alto, California. “We are transforming really you navigate and research nan world.”

Google Maps besides is trying to reside complaints by introducing much elaborate imagery that will make it easier to spot which lane of nan roadworthy to beryllium situated successful good up of having to make a turn.

In different AI twist, Google Maps is going to let extracurricular developers to pat into nan connection models underlying its Gemini exertion to alteration airs questions astir circumstantial destinations, specified arsenic apartments aliases restaurants, and get their queries answered wrong seconds. Google says this caller feature, which initially will spell done a testing phase, has undergone a fact-checking process that it calls “grounding.”

Google's Waze maps, which attraction exclusively connected real-time driving directions, will usage AI to connection a conversational measurement for its astir 180 cardinal monthly users to denote hazards successful nan roadworthy and different problems that could impact walking times.

The determination to bring AI into a work that truthful galore trust upon to get from 1 constituent to nan adjacent reflects Google's increasing assurance successful its expertise to forestall its Gemini exertion from providing mendacious aliases misleading information, besides known arsenic “hallucinations,” to users. Google's AI has already been caught hallucinating successful immoderate of nan summaries that began rolling successful May, including proposal to put glue connected pizza and an assertion that nan 4th U.S. president, James Madison, graduated from nan University of Wisconsin, located successful a metropolis named aft him.