Google Maps, Soon With AI Hallucinations!

Ask It The Best Place To Get Lembas And See What Happens

Google Maps’ Local Guides feature is getting an ‘update’ and will now use an LLM to help generate results if you are searching for a place to go.  The example over at The Verge was if someone looking for “places with a vintage vibe in SF”.  This could lead to an interesting day, more so if the LLM decides to hallucinate stores which don’t actually exist.  That might be inconvenient for tourists but if you are in a strange city trying to find a local walk in clinic or care centre it would be a little more serious.

The US will get this feature first, and depending on how it goes it will roll out slowly to other countries.  The good news is Google Maps won’t send you south of the border if you ask it for the best tacos around.  This will make searching for tourist traps a little easier, since natural language searches will be parsed much more comprehensively.  Who knows, maybe this will be a killer app for LLMs.