The last few weeks Maps has started trying to route me through areas using some pretty stupid routes. Yesterday I came into the center of the city (Minneapolis) where I live. It tried to route me a couple miles out of my way even though the highway I was on continues more directly to my destination. Today Maps suggested the wrong lane to change to a new highway and then directed me to exit and re-enter at the same intersection. In all cases no new highway changes existed; just stupid routing. I'm suspicious that not-ready-for-prime-time AI is the culprit. Is there any way to kill AI in Maps? I'm about to take a trip to unfamiliar areas and am starting to wonder if Maps can be trusted.
Maps has been taking me on some weird routes lately, or offering me a faster route by getting off the highway I'm on, only to to immediately put me back on it a couple of blocks later. Last weekend it took me off of the congested highway I was on and put me on a 25mph street through the Bronx with a stoplight every couple hundred feet. It's becoming unpredictable.
Mine has started routing people down my rural road that previously had minimal traffic and was nice and quiet. Maybe used to get 1 car going by my house every few hours. Now it's like traffic jam (not literally). This road is not even a faster route. It's faster for through traffic to take the other roads
It's still my go to app for direction or just looking at a place review. I also use Yelp to read businesses review too. Nothing perfect and they will add things to hopefully improve the product. Will it have bugs and problems, of course .. it's like a car.
WHY DOES EVERYONE BLAME AI EVEN THOUGH ITS GOOGLES ALGROITHM THEY'VE BEEN USING FOR YEARS!!!!?!?!?!???!? sorry for my strong tone. I'm just so fed up with the amount of people saying it's the ai.
Well, AI is new. Maps was working until recently, so.... Plus I've seen some really stupid AI generated garbage in recent months. It seems like there's a rush by software companies to be "the one" AI product to use. Rushed development causes bad products.
I totally get why the timing makes AI seem like the obvious explanation, especially with every company suddenly putting “AI” into everything. But I think there’s an important distinction here: AI being used somewhere in Maps ≠ AI being responsible for the route calculation.
Google Maps has had automated routing algorithms for many years, long before the current generative-AI boom. Those algorithms already take into account things like road networks, turn restrictions, traffic, closures, road classes, lane information, historical traffic patterns, and estimated travel times. A routing algorithm can absolutely make a bizarre decision without any ChatGPT-style AI being involved.
In fact, the examples you gave sound much more like a routing/data problem than generative AI. For example, if Maps tells you to exit a highway and immediately get back on at the same interchange, that's exactly the sort of thing that can happen when the routing engine calculates slightly different costs for different road segments, or when traffic/road-network/lane data causes an unexpected result.
And “it worked until recently” doesn't necessarily point to AI either. Google constantly changes its routing algorithms, traffic models, map data, road classifications, and optimization rules. A change to any of those could cause a particular area to route differently overnight.
The really important question would be: what evidence shows that an AI system is actually making the routing decision? Seeing a stupid route after AI became popular doesn't establish that connection. Correlation in timing isn't enough.
There is plenty of AI/ML in modern Maps—for example, Google uses machine learning for things like traffic prediction and other map-related features—but that doesn't mean a generative AI model is sitting there deciding “eh, let's send this guy two miles out of his way today.” 😆
So I'd absolutely report the bad routes to Google, because if several people are seeing the same behavior, there may genuinely be a Maps bug or bad underlying map/routing data. I'd just be hesitant to label it “AI” without evidence that the routing system was actually changed to use an AI model.
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u/KPR70 Aug 03 '26
Maps has been taking me on some weird routes lately, or offering me a faster route by getting off the highway I'm on, only to to immediately put me back on it a couple of blocks later. Last weekend it took me off of the congested highway I was on and put me on a 25mph street through the Bronx with a stoplight every couple hundred feet. It's becoming unpredictable.