How an AI Walking Tour Works

From a starting point and a sentence about what you love, to a routed, narrated walking tour on your phone — in seconds. Here is what happens in between, and why the tour you get is different from the one anyone else would get on the same corner.

What you do: four steps

1. Pick a starting point

A city, a neighborhood, a landmark, a street address, or your current location. If you say something like "downtown Chicago," the specific part is kept — you get downtown, not the whole metro area.

2. Say what you're curious about

Choose interests such as history, architecture, food, or art, or just describe the walk you want in your own words. The AI works out the intent behind the description and builds the tour around it.

3. Choose your language and voice

The narrative is written and spoken in the language you pick, and you can choose the narration voice.

4. Start walking

Your route appears on a map with every stop in walking order. Play the narration, follow the directions, and go at whatever pace suits you. Curious about something you see? Ask your AI guide on any stop — it answers from your tour and live web research, and tells you when it doesn't know.

What happens behind the scenes

The tour is composed from scratch each time. Nothing is pulled from a pre-written catalog, which is why it works in cities nobody has produced a tour for. The places come from Google Maps, which covers about 250 million businesses and places (Google, 2025).

  1. Resolve the location. Your starting point is matched to a real place on the map, and the search area is sized to it — tighter for an address, wider for a whole city.
  2. Search for candidate places. Search queries are generated from your specific interests and intent, then run live on Google Maps to find real places nearby. Places Google Maps lists as closed are skipped.
  3. Rank and select the stops. Candidates are ranked by their Google Maps rating and number of reviews, how well they match your interests, and how they sit along a walkable path; when there are enough options, places with no reviews are left out. Each chosen stop is then matched to its Google Maps entry, which supplies the short summary you see for it.
  4. Plan the route. The selected stops are ordered into an efficient walking route, and real walking paths and times are calculated between them.
  5. Write the narrative. Each stop gets an original story written from live web research, with its sources linked right in the text, plus scripted walking directions to the next one.
  6. Narrate it. The finished narrative is turned into natural-sounding audio in your chosen language.

Why the tour is different every time

Two people standing on the same corner get different tours, because the stop selection is driven by their interests and their phrasing. Ask for hidden gems and you get places a guidebook route would skip; ask for landmarks and you get the ones worth the detour.

What you get at the end

A map with your route, a numbered list of stops, written and spoken narration for each one with its sources, a short Google Maps summary and a Google Street View preview of every location, turn-by-turn directions, and the total walking time. You can prepare the tour for offline use so narration and maps keep working without signal, and print it or save it as a PDF with the route map included.

What it costs

You pay per stop, not per tour: each stop is 1 credit, and you're only charged for the stops your tour delivers. Your first few tours are free — every new account gets 20 credits. Bigger purchases earn bonus credits. No subscription, and credits never expire. No per-person rate either. See what each stop includes and what a tour costs.