Upgrade Your Travel Game: AI Chatbots & Google Maps' Smart New Screenshot Feature

Before the days of generative AI tools, mapping out a trip often meant endless hours spent searching on Google. You'd research neighborhoods, dig through public transport websites, and hunt for information about local attractions you might want to visit. This entire process was pretty time-consuming, and you'd typically end up saving bits and pieces of information – sometimes as screenshots you might later forget about – to review everything later.

Now that sophisticated AI chatbots are readily available, my approach has changed dramatically. I simply use a tool like ChatGPT to ask all the questions I have about a new place I'm planning to visit. A prime example is how I used ChatGPT's Deep Research capabilities to plan an incredibly efficient itinerary for Tokyo after attending the marathon there.

I emphasize “efficient” because I wanted to see as much as I could while still allowing my legs some time to recover from the race. Finding quick public transport routes, minimizing walking distances, and grouping attractions located in the same neighborhood were key priorities for my plan.

I also created separate chat threads in ChatGPT covering things like Tokyo's public transit system, airport details, shopping areas, how to get internet access, and basically everything else I needed to understand about the city before my arrival. All these conversations were neatly organized into a folder within ChatGPT, making it easy for me to refer back to them using my iPhone or Mac.

This newer method of using a chatbot saved me a significant amount of time compared to my old travel planning routine centered around manual Google searches. I have no doubt that I will rely on an AI chatbot for every trip I plan moving forward.

However, one thing was still missing when planning visits to places like museums in Tokyo with ChatGPT: built-in navigation. Ultimately, I still had to copy and paste the addresses provided by ChatGPT into Google Maps, which is my preferred navigation app on my iPhone. While needing to switch between two apps for trip planning might sound like a trivial “first-world problem,” it was still a slight annoyance.

Thankfully, a solution is now emerging, and it's powered by Google's Gemini AI. Google Maps is getting a smart new artificial intelligence feature that I anticipate using every single time I plan a trip with the help of a tool like ChatGPT. Thanks to Gemini's capabilities, Google Maps will now be able to interpret screenshots you've taken and automatically extract location data from them.

In a recent blog post, Google explained that Google Maps leverages Gemini's AI to recognize places mentioned in your screenshots and then lets you save them to a curated list right within the app. This completely bypasses the need for manual typing or tedious copy-pasting.

This feature isn't only useful if you're planning trips with AI chatbots. Whether you interact with AI tools or not, you likely already take screenshots on your phone of interesting information you find online, including travel details. Maybe you capture parts of travel blogs or social media posts to remember cool spots or sights you want to check out later.

Google Maps uses AI to understand the content in those screenshots. It automatically identifies the places mentioned and helps generate organized lists of these locations inside the app.

Consider an image like the one below (from my Mac). If you upload this screenshot to Google Maps, the app will analyze the data within it to find any place information you might have saved.

The best part is, this feature becomes even more powerful for my workflow. I had already asked ChatGPT for the addresses of suggested museums specifically so I could find them in Google Maps later. The new Gemini-powered AI in Google Maps will be able to read these actual addresses from the screenshot, making it even smoother to navigate directly to them.

You can find this new AI feature powered by Gemini within the “You” tab in the Google Maps app. The “Screenshots” section will likely show you a short video tutorial explaining how it works the first time you access it.

For the feature to function, you'll need to grant Google Maps permission to access your photo library. Alternatively, you can choose to upload screenshots one by one manually.

In either scenario, Google Maps will use its AI to spot locations within your screenshots. Once it detects potential places, the app will notify you and present the places it found for you to review. This review step is important to ensure the AI correctly identified the information. After you verify the places, Google Maps will transform the raw data from your screenshots into usable, saved locations and lists within the app.

Now, you can simply tap on those identified places directly on the map in Google Maps or view them neatly organized in lists within the “You” tab.

While Google hasn't shared an exact release date, the feature is expected to become available for both Android and iPhone users in the near future. To check if you have access, just make sure you've updated the Google Maps app on your phone and look for the “Screenshots” option in the “You” tab.

Ultimately, while using Google Gemini directly for travel planning might become easier as Google integrates its AI across its services, ChatGPT remains my preferred planning tool. Others might opt for different platforms altogether. Regardless of which tool you use to plan your trip, Google Maps' new ability to extract and organize location data from screenshots is a major step forward and benefits virtually all smartphone travelers.