Google Maps will use AI to answer questions about the new restaurant you want to try

Google Maps is getting a big update that’s supposed to help you find new places to visit with AI. Starting this week, you’ll be able to explore more locations with Immersive View and search for specific spots based on a descriptive query like “things to do with friends at night.”

Google will then use its Gemini AI model to come up with “inspirational collections” matching that description. For late-night options, Google Maps might pull up locations categorized as “speakeasies” or places with “live music.” Meanwhile, regular search results remain below these collections.

But that’s not the extent of the AI features Google is adding to Maps. Once you tap on a location, you’ll see AI-generated summaries of user reviews, along with a prompt to “Ask Maps about this place.” Here, you can enter a question, and Maps will use Gemini to provide an AI-generated answer based on what it’s gathered from reviews.

During a press briefing, Google Maps head Miriam Daniel demonstrated how this might work by selecting a restaurant and entering, “Is it a quiet atmosphere?” Google Maps then returned an answer saying the location “has a lively atmosphere and a cozy feel.” Beneath the response, you’ll see the reviews Gemini used to inform its answer. These features are rolling out on Android and iOS this week in the US, building upon the AI integration Google began experimenting with earlier this year.

“We wanted to make sure that anything we show in this experience is fresh and factual,” Daniel said. “There are 100 million updates happening every day, and we’re able to pull from that refreshed fresh information and ground the results from Gemini… making sure that the results show real places on the map.”

Google is also expanding Immersive View to 150 cities. This feature, first rolled out in 2022, combines Street View and satellite images to provide an aerial view of a location, while also offering the ability to explore a city at street level. Some other updates include enhanced navigation that will show more details on the map when driving in select cities and updates to its Waze-like destination guidance features it previewed in July. Speaking of Waze, the Google-owned app is also adding the ability to report incidents on the road with your voice.