Google is upgrading its Maps features with more Gemini and faster image loading

Google Three announced New features for maps On Tuesday This should make it easier to share your experiences. Although it’s a powerful mapping app in its own right, Google relies on everyday users to contribute their reviews, photos, and videos so that others doing research can make more informed decisions about the places they plan to visit. With new updates to Google Maps, you can access your photos faster to contribute information about the places you’ve been. You can also choose to have Gemini, Google’s AI model, caption your photos and more quickly verify contributions you’ve made in the past.

New photo and video recommendations

It’s not difficult to share photos or videos of a location on Google Maps, but the app will now offer photo and video suggestions from your saved photos — if you give it permission to do so. The new feature will appear in the Contribute tab at the bottom of the Maps app. When you scroll through the view, you’ll see photo and video recommendations or the option to upload other photos.

It’s not clear how specific photo and video recommendations are determined, but the new feature will likely use the photo’s geolocation if that setting is enabled in the camera settings.

A Google representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This feature is now available globally on Android and will be expanded to iOS in the coming months.

Gemini will auto caption your photos

Google gives your photos some Gemini power by automatically analyzing and annotating them once you select them for sharing. This can be useful in situations where you’ve selected multiple photos that you don’t care to annotate.

If you don’t like what Gemini has to offer, you can edit the caption or remove it entirely before posting your photos to Maps.

Gemini captions are available in English on iOS and will be expanded to other languages ​​globally and Android in the future.

New ways to showcase your contributions

You can now view your previous contributions to Google Local Guides Community Program.

When you contribute, you gain points, and the more you contribute, the more you can level up as a local guide. All your points and badges are now prominently displayed on your profile. Google also adds gold profiles for high-ranking contributors, so you know you’re reading reviews from experienced users.

New contributor updates are now rolling out to Android, iOS, and desktop.