Google has just connected its Gemini AI directly to the Google Maps infrastructure, granting it access to real-world location data and unlocking a new level of spatial awareness for AI-powered applications.
The new functionality leverages a base network of over 250 million places worldwide, including restaurants, stores, hotels, and institutions. Gemini can now access data such as business hours, user ratings, and venue details through API calls, enabling AI responses to be more precise and contextually rich.
The system automatically recognizes when geographical context can enhance an answer and independently retrieves relevant data—without requiring the user to request it explicitly.
Pricing starts at $25 per 1,000 prompts that utilize location data, positioning this as a premium AI feature aimed at business users and advanced applications.
This integration gives Google a significant competitive edge by connecting its globally dominant mapping infrastructure with powerful language models. For users, it means AI applications that are aware of the real world—capable of analyzing, recommending, and planning based on actual geographic information.
In Brief: Tech World Highlights
- Character AI has removed Disney characters, including Elsa, Moana, Spider-Man, and Darth Vader, from its platform following a cease-and-desist request from Disney.
- A Pew Research Center study found that 9% of U.S. adults get their news through AI tools, with one-third struggling to distinguish factual information and half receiving inaccurate news.
- Google has launched new visual search capabilities in AI mode, allowing users to search using images or text and simplify online shopping across more than 50 billion products.
- Zhipu AI has released GLM-4.6, a new open-source LLM model with a 200,000-token context window, outperforming Claude Sonnet 4 and DeepSeek-V3.2 in several benchmark tests.
- Perplexity has officially launched its AI-native web browser Comet, now freely available worldwide following its initial invite-only release in July.
AI Trending Tools:
- Claude in Slack – a new integration that enables searching and referencing content across workspaces.
- IBM Granite 4.0 – new, efficient hybrid models designed for enterprise users.
- CData Connect AI – connects any data source with AI to enable real-time data access.
