If you could do with some route-planning inspiration – and most of us could – navigation platform Komoot has launched a ChatGPT app that gives you instant suggestions based on your simple text queries.
Komoot says, “The new tool makes it frictionless to discover the outdoors through natural language prompts. Users can type a request and receive a curated list of route and landmark recommendations in seconds.
“The Komoot for ChatGPT app unlocks a rich library of over seven million routes and four million highlights.”
komoot-3xscreen-2.jpg (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)
Last year, Komoot was bought by an Italian tech firm infamous for mass layoffs, sparking redundancy fears and comments from employees saying they felt “blindsided” by Bending Spoons’ purchase. The acquisition also came in the same month Komoot announced that new users would be required to pay a monthly fee, £4.99 per month in the UK, to sync their routes to third-party devices. Two months later, in May, the redundancy fears were justified as it was reported 85 per cent of Komoot’s workforce had been let go.
The new ChatGPT app is designed to complement existing tools and provide faster route discovery. Then you can use the ‘Open in Komoot’ function to send the information directly from ChatGPT to the Komoot platform to save, edit, or download a route for offline navigation.
Essentially, the new app is designed to improve the route discovery process – and, let’s be honest, most of us spend the majority of our ride time doing the same few routes and could do with some ideas to mix things up.
You can ask for routes with specific characteristics – length, location, duration, sport type, and so on – and your query can go beyond Komoot’s predefined keyword categories and filters. You can also make more tailored requests, such as asking for a certain number of route options, or specifying that you’d like to see the results as a list or map view.
For example, you could ask: “Show me maps of three 50-mile road cycling routes from my house that take in quiet roads and a coffee stop.”
You’ll get suggestions, each starting from your home, prioritising quieter roads and incorporating a café stop along the way.
Tap “Open in Komoot”, and you can see the routes there. You can adjust things like elevation gain, loop format, and surface preference before saving or navigating.
“As people increasingly use ChatGPT for everything from daily tasks to trip planning, Komoot’s app brings Komoot directly into the workflows people are already using to find inspiration and shape their plans,” says project lead Felix Tarcomnicu. “This evolution of Komoot’s navigation and route planning technology will make exploring the outdoors even easier for people worldwide.”
The Komoot for ChatGPT app is available here. Once downloaded, you can trigger it in the ChatGPT chat bar with “@komoot”.