Google Delivers New AI Features To Maps, Google Earth, Waze Apps

Alphabet, Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google has added new generative AI capabilities to its Google Maps, Waze and Google Earth offerings through the company's Gemini AI model. Here's a look at the new capabilities available in some of Google's most commonly used apps. 

Google Maps: Users can now ask Google Maps for inspiration on where to go and what to do curated with Gemini AI. Questions like, "things to do with friends at night" will produce local results curated with Gemini, including a summarized review of the location. Users can also ask follow-up questions like where to park or if the venue offers outdoor seating. 

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Waze: Google has added a Conversational Reporting feature to the Waze app which allows users to report a range of incidents, including traffic, potholes and accidents by tapping the reporting button and speaking naturally. Gemini AI models allow Waze to understand the user, add a real-time report to the map and even ask relevant follow-up questions to categorize the report. 

The new feature will launch in beta to select English-speaking users this week and will expand to more users and languages in the coming months, Google said. 

Google Earth: Google also updated Maps and Google Earth with new generative AI capabilities to provide developers and urban planners with real-world information and to help solve geospatial problems. "Grounding" is a new capability that allows developers to use Google’s place data to help make answers generated by LLMs more factual by reflecting updates from the 250 million places in Google Maps.

Starting next month, Google will also bring Gemini capabilities to Google Earth allowing urban planners to access deeper, city-level insights and significantly reduce the time spent analyzing data. 

Google's new AI-powered features come on the heels of OpenAI's announcement that ChatGPT is now capable of crawling the web for up-to-date news, sports scores, stock quotes and more. The companies are competing, along with other major tech players, to bring AI to the consumer level through everyday devices and apps. 

GOOG Price Action: According to data from Benzinga Pro, Alphabet shares ended Friday's session 0.02% lower at $172.65. 

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