Google Maps, Photos and Workspace Launch Major AI-Driven Innovations

During Google I/O, Mountain View’s annual conference, the company unveiled new details about its Google Maps, Google Photos and Workspace products., as well as all the improvements related to PaLM 2 AI and the global release of Bard. With all this, the company promises us a year of innovation led by learning, immersion and artificial intelligence.

Immersive View for Routes – Immersive View for Routes is the latest feature introduced by Google for the Maps service. This feature will appear in 15 different cities around the world, such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Dublin, Florence, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo and Venice.

But what exactly does he do? We have already been able to feel what Immersive View is. Google first introduced it at I/O last year and the idea is to develop a new system that allows you to monitor the changes in the city in real time and much more clearly. This feature relies heavily on artificial intelligence, which is responsible for combining billions of Street View images with satellite images.

Immersive View for Routes is a natural evolution of a feature introduced in 2022. Now, based on the technology described earlier, Google Maps can offer a clearer view of the routes you should follow., with well-defined elements such as pedestrian crossings, vegetation, number of vehicles, climate and terrain. Added to this are other natural elements of the city’s urbanism, such as lampposts, bike paths, sidewalks, intersections, and more.

Google relies on developers to improve Maps

In addition to integrating the new Immersive View for Routes feature, Google has also confirmed the arrival of an API called Aerial View.. It is intended for developers, and with it they will be able to include aerial photography of a certain area in their applications. This is a partnership between Mountain View and companies like Rent.com that will allow the latter’s customers to better visualize the property and area in a virtual way.

For example, if you’re in the travel business, the company has another surprise for Google Maps. Called Photorealistic 3D, developers will be able to create much more visual 3D images in specific zones and regions.. Thus, if you need to show a tourist, architectural or cultural area, you can do it in a way that customers can see it interactively.

Google Photos is updated with the new AI-enabled Magic Editor.

But Maps isn’t the only one getting a ton of new features. Google Photos has also received a rather interesting new feature.and comes under the name Magic Editor -Magic Editor-.

How does this Magic Editor for Google Photos work? Well, its name perfectly describes its characteristics. The company set an example during a presentation where a person poses for a photo in front of a waterfall. On the picture the sky is cloudy and the man is almost in the middle of the frame.

However, using this Magic Editor, the user was able to remove unwanted elements and even move the person to the side of the image. All this in a matter of seconds and with a couple of taps on the screen.

Magic Editor is one of the most impressive features of Google Photos. The company describes it as a way to “make complex edits without professional editing skills.” Among its possibilities move objects, change and scale elements, improve the sky and remove elements. But it’s not limited to that and it’s that it can also extend objects.

We have an example of the latter in another image. In it, we have a child sitting on a bench carved with a frame. Well then, the user can resize the frame and Google Photos will automatically expand the elements. In this way, he managed to create new parts of the bench and balloons that the child holds in his hand, all with a very natural result.

New AI tools for Workspace

Incorporating AI capabilities into a tool like Google Workspace is one of Mountain View’s best ideas. Earlier this year already we have seen some of the features coming to the pack over the next months..

Today, the company announced what will be the emergence of AI in Sheets and Slides, the two most used tools in the office suite. As discussed at the conference, the former will get automatic generation of tables (though not formulas), while the latter will allow the user to generate images directly from the service.

In the case of Sheets, Google decided to keep it pretty simple. However, the tool is quite powerful, and during the presentation they demonstrated this with an example: “Imagine if you could just describe what you are trying to achieve…just type this on the command line and Spreadsheets will do the rest for you.”

From my side, Slides and Meet will allow you to generate images using artificial intelligence, like DALL-E or Midjourney.. With these, you can attach certain creations to your presentations, and in the case of Meet, you can use it to create a background for your video calls.

Other small improvements for Docs and Gmail.

From my side, Google Docs and Gmail have also received a slight improvement.. This is the emergence of artificial intelligence in the mobile applications of both services, so that many more users will be able to take advantage of them, wherever they are.