Google's new AI-generated Talking Tours sound like the future of free guided city walks

AI voice models want to be your new favorite city guide

· TechRadar

News By Mark Wilson published 1 November 2024

(Image credit: Google)
  • Google has revealed an experimental travel feature called Talking Tours
  • It provides AI-generated commentary on over 50 locations
  • You can try it out in the Google Arts & Culture app or website

Google made it pretty clear with its recent Google Maps upgrades that it wants to be your virtual tour guide – and a new Talking Tours experiment takes those ambitions to the next level.

Found in Google's Arts & Culture app for iOS and Android (you can also try it online), the Talking Tours feature gives you AI-generated commentary on big landmarks for 55 locations around the world.

But what makes it feel like a glimpse of the future of walking tours is the ability to let you look around a 360-degree panorama, take a snap, and then have the AI feed you information about what's in the scene.

Naturally, the audio guides are restricted to major tourist locations like the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul. We tested it on one of London's three locations and it did a solid, if fairly basic, job of filling us in on the scene around the London Eye.

For this "first experimentation", Google says it worked with a "small selection of partners and cultural sites", with "more to be added in the future". But the use of AI-generated audio means it could potentially be scaled very quickly and become a handy free travel resource in the future – if Google doesn't send it to the Google Graveyard.

Just add AR glasses

(Image credit: Google)

Our early tests with Talking Tours show it currently isn't yet close to being a replacement for a real city walking tour guide – and likely won't ever match the human touch or anecdotes of an experienced pro.

But it is also a glimpse of the kind of free travel advice that isn't too far away. Combine a more advanced version of its AR-generated commentary with the smart glasses that the Google Play Store appears to be gearing up for and you could have a very useful, free city break assistant with knowledge of virtually anything you're looking at.

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