Google creates new “Tale Maps” tool to streamline contributions

Google Maps is equally useful because it provides quality information about all the places you want to visit – and it is helped a lot by community contributions. Just yesterday, Google shared some updates on how it’s improving that experience, making it easier to share photos with Maps and track your overall impact. But as it turns out, this is only the beginning of Google’s upgrades here.

Maps is already taking advantage of Gemini, and this extends to these contributions, with Google sharing how Gemini will now help you think of captions for your photo submissions. But we’ve also seen another place where Gemini is looking to integrate itself into the contribution workflow – but it’s not public yet.

Working with Google’s new 26.15.01.894202351 beta release of Maps for Android, we’ve been able to take an early look at “Tail Maps,” which appears to be an AI-powered system to assist with Maps contributions in general. When it goes live, you’ll see a “Post and update with AI” prompt to get you started.

Interacting with it should bring up the Tell Maps card, which appears to use a chatbot-like interface that allows you to describe what you want to add to Maps. For users who are at all unfamiliar with Maps user contributions, this may offer a good, low-friction way to get started.

At the moment, it’s not quite working as expected – we’ve shown you how far we’ve been able to get in the screens above, but it’s quite clear that it’s still a work in progress. That said, what Google is aiming for here seems simple enough, so hopefully it won’t take too long until you’re able to give Tails Maps a spin for yourself.