Gemini model capabilities are coming to the Google Maps platform for developers, starting with the Places API, the company announced Tuesday at Google I/O 2024. With this new feature, developers will be able to view generative AI summaries of places and areas in their own apps and websites.
Summaries are created based on Gemini’s analysis of Google Maps community insights from over 300 million contributors. With this new feature, developers will no longer need to write their own custom descriptions of locations.
For example, if a developer has a restaurant reservation app, this new feature will help users understand which restaurant is best for them. When users search for restaurants in the app, they will be able to quickly see all the most important information, like the house specialty, happy hour deals and the atmosphere of the place.
The new summaries are available for many types of locations, including restaurants, stores, supermarkets, parks, and movie theaters.
Google is also integrating AI-driven contextual search results with the Places API. When users search for locations within a developer’s product, developers will now be able to display reviews and photos related to their search.
If a developer has an app that lets users explore local restaurants, their users can search for “dog-friendly restaurants,” for example, to see a list of relevant restaurants, along with relevant reviews and photos of dogs in restaurants.
Contextual search results are available worldwide, and location and area summaries are available in the United States. Google plans to expand them to more countries in the future.
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