How often do you take screenshots of exciting destinations from travel blogs and TikTok videos but forget about them entirely when you’re planning your next vacation? Don’t fuss if the answer is “plenty.” The increasing information overload leaves little room for memories of a fascinating spot in another random part of the world. Thankfully, the new Gemini AI features in Google Maps can do just that, so your interesting saves don’t go buried under the myriad screenshots on your phone.
After recently receiving Gemini’s superpowers to assist you in discovering places, Google Maps is gaining the ability to look through your screenshots to help you plan travels. The Maps app is getting a new “screenshot list” feature that will identify text from your screenshots and open up details on Google Maps. Google’s blog post also says you can save useful places in a list, which can be shared with others who might be traveling with you.
Currently, Google Maps’ screenshot list can only read text from your screenshots. While image recognition would be ideal to help us locate some unidentifiable spots from images, that ability is not available just yet. One reason for that may be to allow all the processing to happen on-device instead of uploading your media to Google’s cloud centers.
Moreover, the screenshot list functionality is not turned on by default and must be toggled manually — which, I feel, is a good way for people to safeguard their privacy.
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At the moment, the feature is starting to roll out only to iOS and will arrive on Android soon.
Taking stress out of travel planning
In addition to helping you jot down a list of places to add to your itinerary, AI overviews in Google Search will also help you create travel plans for specific destinations and based on the duration of your stay.
In addition, Google is expanding the popular price drop alerts it already offers for flights to hotels. If you search for hotel prices using Google, you will be able to set a price drop alert for specific dates and location. In case of a reduction in hotel room prices, Google will send you a notification via email.