To put it to the test, I had Gemini plan a day-long itinerary for me around the city. After an hour or so of having Gemini find stuff for me \u2014 playgrounds near the new light rail extension, kid-friendly restaurants with vehicle themes, you get the gist \u2014 I was impressed. Some of the suggestions were obvious, but I also bookmarked a handful of spots not on my radar.<\/p>\n
Gemini had big shoes to fill: my own. I\u2019m a Google Maps fiend. I use it for normal stuff like getting around, but also, sometimes I just like scrolling around and seeing if anything new catches my eye. You can find some real gems this way. I\u2019ve found bike routes, playgrounds, hidden parks, and new coffee shops to try. I\u2019d spend all day every day wandering around Seattle on public transit going to bookstores and fancy stationery shops if I could. It\u2019s how I usually spend a day off, but I also tend to get overwhelmed by the endless possibilities and just wind up visiting one of a couple of neighborhoods I know well. So I had Gemini chart me a path into less familiar territory.<\/p>\n
Tapping \u201cAsk Maps\u201d in the app presents you with a familiar chatbot.<\/p>\n Gemini found a coffee shop I hadn\u2019t been to yet in Pioneer Square, which is honestly impressive.<\/p>\n Gemini pops up as \u201cAsk Maps\u201d and presents you with a text box when you tap on it. It answers questions based on data in Google Maps, including user reviews, but can pull in information from other sources, too. If you ask whether to bring an umbrella on your trip across town, it can check the weather for you \u2014 that kind of thing.<\/p>\n I gave it my parameters: I would be traveling by public transit and I wanted a stop for lunch, a nice walk somewhere, and a coffee shop where I could work on my laptop, in that order. I wanted to visit two different neighborhoods and needed to be home by 4:30. Its first suggestions were very me-coded \u2014 a cafe next to a bookstore and a reliable coffee shop downtown \u2014 but I\u2019d been to both recently. After a little back-and-forth it was settled: tacos, plants, and a Scandinavian-inspired coffee shop.<\/p>\n Tacos Chukis is familiar to me but I\u2019d never been. I almost walked by the place, since it\u2019s tucked into the back of a building with a half-dozen other retail shops and no sign on the sidewalk. But Gemini steered me to the right spot, and right on time: It had only opened up 15 minutes before I walked in. My AI itinerary hinted that the house specialty with grilled pineapple was a popular choice, and I found out why. Three excellent tacos later, it was time to head to my next stop.<\/p>\n Except I was ahead of schedule, so asked Gemini to find a unique shop nearby I could check out before walking north to the park. It confidently recommended Elliott Bay Books \u2014 a great spot, but definitely not \u201cone block east\u201d as it claimed. This was the only major hallucination I encountered in this experiment, but it could have been a real pain if I\u2019d followed its instructions. Did I mention it was pouring rain outside?<\/p>\n Keep an eye out for hallucinations.<\/p>\n Kobo was exactly the vibe I was looking for.<\/p>\n After I politely informed Gemini that it was suggesting I walk 10 minutes in the wrong direction, it corrected course and sent me to Kobo: a beautiful little store with Japanese goods. I\u2019d been to their other location a few times but didn\u2019t realize there was one nearby.<\/p>\n By the time I set foot in Volunteer Park, the front of my jacket was soaked. My umbrella was doing the heavy lifting, but I needed it to cover my backpack with laptop inside. Hence, the sog. Gemini had suggested a scenic loop around the park or a trip into the conservatory \u2014 basically a giant greenhouse \u2014 if I wanted to dry off. No contest.<\/p>\n Plants fucking rule, man. Did you know there\u2019s a tree that hollows itself out to attract ants to live in it? And the ants fight off would-be invaders to protect the tree? That\u2019s wild. That\u2019s also a tree that exists at the Volunteer Park Conservatory, a building I\u2019d seen but never been inside. Admission was $6 and I was a little grumpy with Gemini for failing to mention that, but it proved to be a small price to pay for time inside a warm, tranquil oasis on a rainy day.<\/p>\n Someone who works at the conservatory saw me marveling at one of the towering palms and snapping photos with my phone. She took me over to the cacti room and insisted on taking my photo with the giant cacti there. \u201cIt\u2019s so beautiful in here I could cry!\u201d she said as she left me among the cacti. I had to agree. There\u2019s something ghostly about a cactus, and they come in so many different shapes and sizes, down to the classic saguaro that I know mostly from cartoons. There\u2019s the ones covered in fluff, the big round ones that look like the world\u2019s worst footstools, and another one that looks like it\u2019s covered in peeling waxpaper. They\u2019re sort of haunting and mystical up close, like seeing an owl in the wild. Not the kind of scenery I expected on a very wet day in the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been thinking lately about the way tech companies all seem to want us to use AI to buy more things \u2014 even more so after a recent conversation<\/a> with my friend Will Sattelberg at 9to5Google. The way that every AI demo ends in booking a flight or buying a new pair of sneakers is getting pretty old. But it\u2019s not just a tech company thing \u2014 I\u2019ve also been examining my own tendency to seek out a transaction whenever I leave the house.<\/p>\n I gravitate toward places I can leave with a new book, or a coffee, or a little treat, I think partially as a way to alleviate the anxiety of just\u2026 existing in the world. How do you pick a place on the map when there are thousands to choose from? What if I choose wrong and have a bad time? Buying a little trinket proves to myself that I went somewhere worthy, my thinking goes. But the feeling never seems to last, so before long I\u2019m back on Google Maps planning another excursion to find the one perfectly curated home goods store that will fix me.<\/p>\n In any case, I did leave the conservatory with some mementos \u2014 a soggy admission ticket and a couple of kid-sized gardening tools from the gift shop. My kid loves digging up the yard while I pull weeds, and it\u2019s something I want to lean into more. Sometimes the perfect excursion out of the house can just be playing in the dirt that\u2019s right outside, you know? Anyway, a warm, dry route 10 bus was waiting for me to head toward my final stop of the day: coffee.<\/p>\n How do you pick a place on the map when there are thousands to choose from?<\/p>\n I hadn\u2019t heard of Day Made Kaffe, which struck me as odd, because I\u2019m in the neighborhood where it\u2019s located pretty frequently. Based on Gemini\u2019s description of a minimalist but warm and laptop-friendly coffee shop, it also sounded like my kind of place. I had been there before, I realized when I walked in, before it was a coffee shop. The place used to be a \u2014 you guessed it! \u2014 fancy home goods store where I bought a couple of Christmas gifts in 2024. Time is a flat circle, etc.<\/p>\n Gemini didn\u2019t miss; Day Made is extremely my shit. The coffee was great and the vibes were immaculate. The cardamom bun that Gemini said I should get wasn\u2019t available, so I got a pastry with guava jelly to compensate for the dismal weather. I watched the Artemis II launch on mute, left the shop at 3:40 as Gemini had instructed, and got on my last bus of the day. The time when I walked in the door at home? 4:26. Nailed it.<\/p>\n If my big day out in the city was a success \u2014 and I think it was! \u2014 then it was made possible by people, not Gemini. People wrote the reviews and recommendations that led me to Tacos Chukis. Gemini is just the middleman. But when you\u2019re dealing with a vast and often overwhelming dataset like the one in Google Maps, a tool like Gemini strikes me as a very useful one.<\/p>\n Day made, indeed.<\/p>\n I often rely on user reviews to suss out how kid-friendly a place really is, and Gemini lets me search a lot of those reviews across a wide area all at once to find a place that both serves dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and craft cocktails. But crucially, when it\u2019s time to get from point A to point B, the LLM doesn\u2019t just freestyle and talk you through transit directions \u2014 you just open up the transit directions in Google Maps, which includes accurate real-time information.<\/p>\n Gemini also does a decent job of showing its work along the way as it makes suggestions so you can see where it\u2019s coming up with claims. It\u2019s not immune from hallucinations, and that\u2019s a particularly big concern when you\u2019re relying on it to steer you through the real world. But knowing that\u2019s the case, I still think this is an impressive tool \u2014 whether you\u2019re trying to find a restaurant nearby with high chairs and right now because everyone is hungry and crabby, or whether you\u2019re on a more leisurely adventure of discovery.<\/p>\n Photography by Allison Johnson \/ The Verge<\/p>\n Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Allison JohnsonClose Allison Johnson<\/p>\n Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All by Allison Johnson<\/a><\/p>\n AIClose<\/p>\n AI<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All AI<\/a><\/p>\n GoogleClose<\/p>\n Google<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All Google<\/a><\/p>\n Hands-onClose<\/p>\n Hands-on<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All Hands-on<\/a><\/p>\n ReviewsClose<\/p>\n Reviews<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Screenshot-2026-04-03-at-3.37.18PM.png\"\/)
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