Google recently announced that it’s now offering Google Maps as a tool inside Gemini. Well, sort of.
In a blog post addressing app developers, Google said the Gemini API can now use Google Maps as a tool to ground their apps with real-world data of 250 million places on Earth.
In this context, grounding means it links the AI system (in Google’s case, Gemini) to abstract but verifiable (and hopefully real) information as data sources (in this case, Google Maps). For app developers, using Gemini in their apps is now slightly more reliable, as the option to connect it to Google Maps data is available.
If done correctly, this means Gemini is less likely to hallucinate or rely on extremely outdated information whenever you ask it things related to landmarks, shops, attractions, directions, or any other metadata Google Maps would have.
The added API access means Gemini can also have a Google Maps widget now.
This also means Gemini can show you a widget snippet of Google Maps when you ask questions related to such places, per its example above.
Google also gave other examples to show how Gemini’s responses can be more helpful with grounded Google Maps data, e.g.:
- When asked about itinerary planning, it doesn’t just list places with boilerplate information, but also now factors in data you usually get from Google Maps, such as distance, travel time, local happenings, and also takes into account opening hours or public holidays affecting the places you want to visit
- For people with preferences (e.g. kid-friendly places), it can cross-reference against such Google Maps data to make these recommendations, instead of pulling out information from random folks off the web
- For queries that are specific to needs (e.g., asking whether this KTV pub has outdoor seating), it is able to pull out relevant quotes from existing Google Reviews to verify, as opposed to saying it might have outdoor seating based on photos
With this new API, Gemini can now be grounded in both Google Maps data and Google Search.
Source: Google (blog)