point it at a photo. it reads the signage, the architecture, which side the cars drive on, the angle of the light. then it hands you coordinates and shows its work.
the same thing a geoguessr champion does with their eyes, done in seconds and made to explain itself.
it pulls every geographic cue out of the pixels. text on walls, the shape of a skyline, lane paint, the trees, the shadows.
it weighs the cues against a map of the world and lands on the tightest place it can actually defend, not just a lucky guess.
you get coordinates, a confidence score, and the list of reasons that got it there. a pin you can check, not a black box.
logos, shopfronts, street signs, the letters on a wall. often this alone is the whole answer.
which side the cars sit on cuts the planet roughly in half before anything else is checked.
a roofline, a bus shelter, a tower. buildings carry a passport.
the alphabet on a sign narrows the map fast.
shadow angle hints at latitude and the hour of day.
the trees, the dust, the haze, the quality of light. climate is a coordinate.
line colour, lane width, sign fonts and shapes differ country to country.
plate shape and colour, bollard style, the paint on a curb.
if the file still carries gps in its exif, that beats any guess. it checks first.
strong on cities, landmarks and streetscapes. the more a photo has to say, the tighter the fix. drop it in a field with nothing in it and it will say so rather than invent a pin. every fix ships with a confidence score and the reasons behind it, so you can trust the strong ones and question the weak ones.
the cafe from an old photo, a screenshot from a film, the street in someone's story. put a name and a pin on it.
verify where a photo was actually taken. ground a claim in coordinates instead of a caption.
backfill location on a library of images that never carried it. searchable by place.
see the cues a champion sees, then read the reasoning to sharpen your own eye.
locator is built to identify where a photo was taken, not to find where a person lives. pointing this at someone to track them is the line, and it is a design choice as much as a policy one. it checks for a person as the subject, keeps the framing on streets and landmarks, and logs how it's used. if you build on it, build the same way.
no exif required. it reads what a photo shows.