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If done correctly, this means Gemini is less likely to hallucinate or rely on extremely outdated information whenever you ask it things related to landmarks, shops, attractions, directions, or any other metadata Google Maps would have.
