Key Takeaways
- Google Maps’ “Ask Maps” feature can now start an order for you—but you still need to complete it.
- The feature is part of a big Ask Maps update Google announced on Thursday, including new options for live transit information.
- While it’s a taste of an agentic Google Maps, it doesn’t really seem to be all that useful, at least based on the description.
As one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Google is putting its AI features and platforms into each and every one of its products. As such, it’s no surprise that its wildly popular navigation app, Google Maps, is getting the same treatment. While it’s easy to use the app without encountering much AI, if you so choose, you can use Google’s latest AI features to find new restaurants, accommodations, or hot spots in your area. And now, Google is boasting that it is launching new “agentic” features that will even allow the app to order food for you—sort of.
Ask Maps Gets an Agentic Upgrade
Back in March, the company rolled out “Ask Maps,” a chatbot-like interface in Google Maps that taps into Gemini to help you find relevant places on the map. For example, Google says you can “Ask Maps” to find you a restaurant with availability for six at a specific date and time, keeping in mind strict dietary requirements. It’s about what you’d expect from the combination of Gemini and Google Maps: You “chat” with the map to find what you need.
Now, Google is expanding on these features, introducing new agentic options to reduce the work you actually have to do to pick up lunch (if not by all that much). Starting today, Google says Ask Maps can handle “complex, multi-step tasks,” including functions it can handle on your behalf, and the flagship feature is ordering food for you—or, at least, starting an order.
Ask Maps Can’t Actually Order Food for You
Google says you can launch Ask Maps and type something like “order spicy pad kee mao with seafood for me to pick up on my way home.” While you might think such a feature would handle the entire request for you, Ask Maps doesn’t quite get there. It will, according to Google, look for open restaurants on your route home, and it can even take into consideration your previous orders and dietary needs. But once it floats options, you still need to choose the restaurant you want to order from. Once you do, the agentic features kick in: Google says that Ask Maps will remember your original request and will begin adding the appropriate items to your cart through services like Square and Toast (with Uber Eats support coming soon). However, Ask Maps won’t actually order the food for you. You still need to manually review what’s been placed in your cart and approve the order before the restaurant will receive it.
Other Agentic Features in Ask Maps
As part of this Ask Maps update, you can also ask about hotels and local events. Google suggests asking the feature something like “For next week’s conference in downtown Miami, find me a decently priced, top-rated hotel with an artsy vibe, within walking distance from a gym and restaurants.” That’s certainly a complex request, and, according to Google, Ask Maps will be able to compare prices and availability to find an appropriate hotel. The same goes for things like concerts and comedy shows: Ask Maps will surface results based on your request, but you’ll need to click through to actually buy tickets yourself.
This Isn’t Yet the Agentic Future We Were Promised
These options aren’t yet available on every Google Maps app, so it’s difficult to personally attest to how well they work—and the vision isn’t entirely clear. Companies like Google have been promising that agentic features will save us time and rescue us from having to perform tedious or menial tasks. And while this feature does save the 30 seconds or so it takes to build a restaurant order, that’s about all it does. Not only do you still have to intervene in multiple aspects of the process (including the actual ordering of the food), it seems like the whole ordeal takes longer than it should. Heading to the restaurant’s site, building the order yourself, then placing it is likely more efficient than asking Google’s AI to find a restaurant with a specific dish, have it build the order, and then have you review it anyway.
Maybe that impression will change once the feature is more widely available, and perhaps this is just one step toward a future where Google Maps can complete a whole order entirely on your behalf. That said, it’s hard to imagine fully trusting an AI to manage a complex order for multiple people with varying dietary restrictions—not only would it likely be faster to do it yourself, but the stakes are too high when an AI could easily overlook an allergy label.
Other New Ask Maps Features
This update also incorporates Google’s “Personal Intelligence,” which pulls information from your various Google apps to return more personalized results. For example, you could ask Maps to find things to do before an afternoon flight, and Google Maps should be able to access Gmail and Google Calendar to locate your travel details and tailor its suggestions accordingly.
