Google Maps adds Gemini AI with conversational search and 3D immersive navigation in biggest update in over a decade

Google Maps is rolling out two new Gemini-powered features starting this week in the U.S. and India: Ask Maps, which lets users ask conversational questions like “where can I charge my phone without waiting in a long line for coffee?” drawing on data from over 300 million places and 500 million contributor reviews, and Immersive Navigation, which renders driving routes in photorealistic 3D using Street View and aerial imagery. The update is notable less for the features themselves and more for Google's distribution strategy — rather than asking users to download a new AI app, it simply embeds the technology into a product billions of people already use daily, whether they asked for it or not. The obvious concern is whether AI navigation guidance that is confidently wrong could cause real-world harm, a higher-stakes version of the hallucination problem that plagues AI across the industry.