A person following a mobile phone map navigation tool whilst walking around a town - Google Maps street walk

A person following Google Maps while walking around Valencia, Spain, February 19, 2026

Google Maps is getting a new AI-powered “Ask Maps” feature

Will Gemini be enough to hush the Apple Maps heads?

3/13/26 6:53AM

Updated 4/2/26 6:20AM

For those of us who weren’t sure we’d heard enough about chatbots and how they can find their way into all facets of modern life, Alphabet announced on Thursday that it would be integrating Gemini into Google Maps.

Bot-seat driver

As part of its “biggest navigation upgrade in over a decade,” the new “Ask Maps” feature will allow users to ask more sophisticated questions in the Google Maps app, providing chill-sounding use cases like, “My friends are coming from Midtown East to meet me after work. Any spots with a cozy aesthetic and a table for 4 at 7 tonight?”

Anyone with a decent handle on their local area and a tight grasp of Google Maps’ “Saved Places” feature might balk at that request, but other examples like phone-charging spots that aren’t busy coffee shops, or new trip-planning capabilities, could prove genuinely useful.

However, whether Alphabet plumbing its chatbot into the Google Maps app will be enough to win over fans of its biggest rivals in the navigation game is another matter entirely.

iCan do better

With Google Maps having been seen by many as the superior option for a while, social media users have revisited the maps debate of late, pitting the Alphabet product against Apple’s version on purely aesthetic grounds. Some of the results are pretty damning. Exhibit A:

Apple Maps is leaps and bounds ahead of Google Maps pic.twitter.com/blRiW08WK0
— Apple Design (@TheAppleDesign) February 21, 2026

And — in what maybe feels like a slightly less fair, but equally damaging, point of comparison — exhibit B:

Google Maps vs. Apple Maps 💀 pic.twitter.com/aCg67nvELl
— 📁 (@jvepng) March 2, 2026

But whether you prefer the default map that comes with an iPhone, the one that’s built into Android devices, or some secret (probably more practical) third thing, the contest between the first two definitely seems to be getting more intense recently... at least, if social media buzz is anything to go by.

However, in terms of actual usage, Google's lead remains formidable. Search data suggests that “google maps” is still searched for far more than “apple maps” is, and App Store data shows that the iPhone version of Google Maps has 7.1 million reviews, with an average rating of 4.7, while Apple's own has just 51,000 reviews with a measly 2.4 stars.

Correction: The original version of this story included a misleading chart comparing traffic to maps.google.com versus maps.apple.com based on Similarweb data. Similarweb clarifies that only a tiny fraction of Google Maps traffic passes through maps.google.com -- most goes through google.com/maps. In other words, the bulk of web traffic related to Google Maps was not reflected in the chart, which appeared to show Apple Maps catching up with Google Maps on the web.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

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TAKING ACCOUNTS

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Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5