Google is steadily transforming its familiar products into AI-powered assistants. Instead of simply displaying information, its apps are beginning to understand natural-language requests, create new content and complete tasks on a user’s behalf.
Four developments illustrate this shift particularly well: conversational Google Maps, photo-to-video creation in Google Photos, Gemini’s integration into Chrome and the experimental world-building platform known as Project Genie.
Google Maps Becomes Conversational
Searching in Google Maps has traditionally involved entering a business name, address or category. With Ask Maps, Google is moving toward a much more conversational experience.
Users can ask detailed questions such as:
“Where can I charge my phone nearby without waiting in a busy café?”
Or:
“Can you find a well-lit public tennis court that is open tonight?”
Rather than returning a basic list of locations, Ask Maps interprets the full request and presents relevant options on a customized map. It can draw on information about more than 300 million places, along with reviews and contributions from the Maps community. Recommendations can also be personalized using places the user has previously searched for or saved.
The experience is designed to move smoothly from discovery to action. After finding a suitable location, users may be able to save it, share it, request directions or make a restaurant reservation without beginning a separate search.
Ask Maps began rolling out on Android and iOS in the United States and India in March 2026, with a desktop version planned afterward. Availability will therefore depend on the user’s country, device and account.
Google is also introducing Immersive Navigation, which adds richer 3D visuals, clearer representations of lanes and road features, more natural voice instructions and explanations of the trade-offs between alternative routes. The aim is to make navigation feel less like following a diagram and more like receiving guidance from someone who understands the road ahead.
Google Photos Can Turn a Photograph Into a Video
Google Photos is also becoming a generative creation tool.
Its Photo to video feature adds movement to a still image and produces a short video clip. Users open the Create tab, choose a photograph and select an option such as “Subtle movement” or “I’m feeling lucky.” Google’s Veo 3 video-generation model then animates the image.
This could be used to bring an old family photograph to life, add atmosphere to a landscape or transform a favorite image into a short clip for social media. Because the result is generated by AI, however, the movement should be viewed as a creative interpretation rather than an accurate reconstruction of what originally happened.
The Create tab also includes several related tools. Highlight videos can automatically assemble photographs and video clips around a subject such as a person, holiday or destination. Cinematic photos create a moving three-dimensional effect, while animations combine several still images into a GIF. Users can also apply styles such as sketches, comics, anime or 3D animation before turning an image into a video.
Google provides a limited number of AI generations per day, with higher limits for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. The Create tab and some of its generative features initially launched in the United States, so they may not yet appear in every region.
Gemini Is Becoming Part of the Chrome Browser
Google is positioning Gemini as a browsing assistant built directly into Chrome.
Gemini can appear in a side panel beside the webpage a user is viewing. This allows someone to keep their main page open while asking questions, summarizing information or comparing material from several tabs. For example, Gemini could summarize multiple product reviews, compare travel options or help organize information gathered during research.
The integration goes beyond answering questions about webpages. Gemini in Chrome can work with connected Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Maps, YouTube, Google Flights and Google Shopping. A traveler could potentially ask it to find conference details in an email, compare suitable flights and prepare a message informing colleagues of the expected arrival time. Connected-app access is optional and can be managed in Gemini’s settings.
Chrome is also gaining AI-powered image transformation. Using Google’s Nano Banana technology, users can request changes to an image shown in the browser without first downloading it and uploading it to a separate editor.
For Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the United States, Google has also introduced a preview of auto browse. This agentic feature can assist with multi-step activities such as researching travel costs, completing forms, scheduling appointments or gathering documents. Google says it pauses for confirmation before sensitive actions such as completing a purchase or publishing a social-media post.
These features suggest that a browser will no longer be only a window through which people visit websites. It may increasingly become an active assistant capable of understanding what is happening across those websites and helping users complete the next step.
Project Genie Lets Users Create Interactive Worlds
Perhaps the most experimental development is Project Genie, a Google Labs research prototype powered by Google DeepMind’s Genie 3 world model.
Project Genie allows users to describe an environment using text or images, create a character and then explore the generated world. A user might request a snowy mountain landscape, an alien planet or a fictional city and choose to move through it by walking, driving, riding or flying. The environment is generated in real time as the user travels through it.
The prototype has three central elements:
World sketching lets users define a character, setting, visual style and exploration perspective.
World exploration generates the path and environment in real time in response to the user’s actions.
World remixing allows existing worlds and prompts to be modified into new interpretations. Users can also record videos of their explorations.
Project Genie is not yet a complete game-development platform. Google describes it as an early research experiment, and current limitations include inconsistent physics, imperfect adherence to prompts, control latency and a maximum generation length of 60 seconds. Access initially began rolling out to adult Google AI Ultra subscribers in the United States.
Even with those limitations, the technology offers a glimpse of how future virtual environments might be created. Instead of manually designing every object and pathway, creators could describe a world and begin exploring it almost immediately.
From Searching to Collaborating
These developments share a common direction.
Google Maps is moving from location search to conversation. Google Photos is moving from storage to generative creation. Chrome is moving from passive browsing to AI-assisted action. Project Genie is moving from displaying generated media to letting users enter and explore it.
The most important change is not simply that Google is adding AI buttons to existing products. Its software is beginning to understand goals expressed in ordinary language and help turn those goals into actions, images, journeys and interactive experiences.
The technology is still developing, and many features remain experimental or limited to particular subscriptions and countries. Nevertheless, the direction is becoming clear: Google wants its products to function less like separate utilities and more like connected, creative and increasingly proactive assistants.
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