A sunny morning in early October, a bottle of water, a hat, sunglasses and cell phone at hand -sheltered, but close at hand- because we are going to go out for a walk through the City.
Under the banner of be tourists for a whileCamila, guide from @turistearteba, proposes making a one hour circuitwith starting point and return to Puerto Madero, the “women’s neighborhood.”
The objective: organize a tour, learn a little more about the history of buildings and monuments that we find on our way, and experience several of Google’s tools powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) that we have at hand on our cell phone.
How to organize a walk with Artificial Intelligence and what each Google tool is for
Put together a personalized tourknowing a little more about a building or monument that we are seeing or finding nearby places is increasingly easier if we take advantage of the tools we have on our cell phone.
Some we use daily; Others may be unknown to us, but the good thing is that they are all at hand on the cell phone.
- Search for an itinerary proposal: Gemini
It can be defined as a personal assistant to create an itinerary. You must enter directions that are as precise as possible so that Gemini, Google’s conversational assistant with artificial intelligence, can offer a tailored tour.
That is to say, “put together a good prompt“says Sabrina Valls from Google Argentina, referring to the request for information made to the app.
Y define four axes to develop instructions: person (who requests the tour; a tour guide, for example); task (what we want it to do, like putting together an itinerary in our case); context (whatever it is outdoors, whether it includes museums, whether it suggests vegetarian restaurants, or whatever you want); and format (how we want the proposal to be presented, for example as a list or as a table).
Hay details that should be specified such as travel time, means of mobility – on foot, by car, by bike -, or any other factor that is considered relevant (accessibility, available budget, etc.) so that the result is as close as possible to what was expected.
- Diagram the circuit: Maps
They allow you to create “smart routes” and optimized routes that take into account issues such as traffic volume, closed streets or demonstrations.
Super interesting Immersive View which applies to many iconic attractions and offers a preview of what we are going to visit.
Other functions to take into account: the parking location, to save the location of the car or means of transportation, to find it easily when the ride is over; and the generation of personalized lists with points of interest to quickly find them on the map.
- Instructions for moving in real time: Live View
Live View of Google Maps it is possible to access live instructions on how to get to a destination through real images on a map that appears at the bottom of the screen.
- Information about the attraction in the moment: Google Lens
A tool that collects and interprets information with images: it offers data and specifications about points of interest during the tour.
By pointing your phone’s camera at a building, monument, or work of art, Google Lens can provide detailed information about its history, architecture, or cultural relevance.
Another advantage: it works as a real-time text translator. That is, if you are in a place with signs in another language, it translates them instantly. “You can scan a product – a menu, a label, a poster – and it translates it for you,” explains Valls.
- Where are we going? Nearby Search
A coffee to close the walk? A restaurant for lunch? A supermarket to do some shopping before returning home? A place to buy souvenirs? Maps has the Nearby Search option that performs a search adapted to the interests of each person with filters by categories such as those with the best score, the closest, etc.
- Personalized memories: Google Photos
A beautiful place, but full of people. The photo that you like the most of the ones that were taken of you, but with details that you don’t like.
Among the features of Google Photos is the Magic Eraser to eliminate details from the photo (and the tool takes care of not leaving a blank space, it replaces it with the appropriate background) and the Portrait Light function, which allows you to edit photos to achieve better lighting and sharpness.
In short, as Valls explains, the possibility of improving photos in relation to sharpness, lighting and the possibility of accommodating certain elements.
What circuit did we travel?
With Camila leading the group, we passed by several iconic attractions in the area: the first stop was Luna Park and we ended up on a corner, Macacha Güemes and Pierina Dealessi. Here the stops:
- Luna Park with its many stories and curiosities: that it was initially on July 9, that it was the venue for Carlos Gardel’s wake, a Nazi event – the largest held outside of Germany -, or that it was the place chosen by Diego Maradona to marry Claudia Villafañe, among many other things;
- the imposing Palace of Posts and Telecommunications (Correo Central, now the Kirchner Cultural Center) next to the monument to Juana Azurduy and the statue of Samuel Morse – the license plate was stolen, but with the cell phone, whoever has no idea what character it is points and obtains the data-;
- the Pink House;
- Puerto Madero and its docks, ideal to talk about the Eduardo Madero project vs. that of Luis Huergo (docks vs. “comb” type): the first won, nephew of Francisco Bernabé Madero, then vice president, it was inaugurated in 1898 and by 1900 it was already known that it was not going to be useful, it was slow and inefficient;
- Santiago Calatrava’s Women’s Bridge, inaugurated at a very difficult moment in Argentine history: December 20, 2001;
- the silos intervened by the American artist Barbara Kruger, today a heritage site of the City.