Google Maps taps Gemini to crack down on political vandalism and spammy reviews

• Google Maps users have a history of submitting new names for places and businesses to make social or political commentary.
• Now Maps will use Gemini to screen these submissions and block them before they can go live.
• Google’s also doubling down on its fight against spammy reviews, including blackmail schemes against businesses.

On first glance, Google Maps doesn’t really seem like a hotbed of political activism — it’s more of a “my car’s on E right now, where the heck is the nearest gas station??” kind of problem solver, mostly concerned with getting us where we need to go. But every so often we hear about it becoming an unexpected platform for political discourse — like when the Gulf of “America” found itself review-bombed by users protesting the name-change. Stories like those might be a little less frequent going forward, though, as Maps channels Gemini to block content like that at the source.

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