Google Maps bakes in Gemini to improve navigation and hands-free use

Google Maps bakes in Gemini to improve navigation and hands-free use

Over the last yr, Google has added a number of AI-powered options to Maps to improve discovery and allow customers to ask questions about locations. Now, the company is upgrading the app with Gemini to let customers ask its AI bot questions while driving, improve navigation, and carry out more duties.

While driving, customers can now ask Gemini to reply questions about locations of curiosity on their route, return outcomes about other subjects (like sports activities or news), and even carry out duties like including occasions to their calendar.

You can ask a number of questions in a dialog, too: for instance, “Is there a budget-friendly restaurant with vegan options along my route, something within a couple of miles? … What’s parking like there?”

Drivers can even report site visitors incidents utilizing Gemini, and Maps will proactively notify customers of disruptions on the route ahead.

Image Credits: Google

Google is also including a new feature to Maps that combines Gemini with Street View data to improve navigation directions. So instead of telling you to flip proper after, say, 500 toes, Maps will now point out a close-by landmark, like gasoline stations, eating places or well-known buildings, and highlight them before you’ve gotten to make the flip.

The company said that Gemini cross-references data about 250 million locations with Street View photographs to establish important and seen landmarks for navigation.

Maps is also getting the ability to reply questions about your environment by working together with Google Lens. So you’ll be able to point the digicam at locations of curiosity, like eating places and landmarks, and ask questions like, “What is this place and why is it popular?”

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Google said the new Gemini navigation options can be rolled out to iOS and Android devices in the coming weeks, and said assist for Android Auto can be coming soon. Traffic alerts are rolling out in the U.S. for Android customers first; Landmark navigation is presently only going to be obtainable in the U.S. on each iOS and Android; and Lens with Gemini can be useful in the U.S. later this month.

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