AI App Wrinkles Reveals the History Behind Nearby Places

A new location-aware app called Wrinkles wants to make everyday walks feel more like guided tours. Instead of asking users to search for landmarks or follow numbered stops on a screen, the app automatically plays stories about nearby buildings, streets, monuments and culturally significant locations as they move through an area.

Available on iOS and Android, Wrinkles combines location tracking, conversational AI and audio narration to function like a digital guide that travels alongside the user. Its creators believe the same technology could be useful not only during holidays but also on commutes, neighbourhood walks and visits to museums, parks or university campuses.

A Map Containing 1.3 Million Stories

Wrinkles has built a database covering approximately 1.3 million points of interest across 177 countries. These locations can include major tourist attractions, historic buildings, archaeological sites and less obvious places that people may otherwise walk past without noticing.

As users approach a location, the app can automatically narrate its history through their headphones. They can then ask follow-up questions about the place using the app’s conversational AI. Someone listening to the history of Rome’s Trevi Fountain, for example, could ask where its water comes from or request additional details about its construction.

The app can also generate personalised walking tours in seconds. Users choose a location and a subject, such as architecture, music, politics or art, and Wrinkles creates a route, arranges the stops and provides narration as they reach each destination.

Frustration at the British Museum Inspired the Idea

Wrinkles was founded by longtime friends David Stemler and Ryan Hansan. Stemler previously worked as an advertising executive, while Hansan founded meal-delivery company ScratchDC and shared commercial-kitchen business TasteLab.

Stemler developed the idea during a visit to the British Museum in London. While using the museum’s official self-guided tour app, he found himself repeatedly looking down at his phone to match numbers displayed beside exhibits with entries in the app.

The experience led him to question why a phone that already knew his location could not automatically describe the object or place directly in front of him. He later contacted Hansan, and that idea eventually developed into Wrinkles.

The founders designed the app around audio so that people could continue looking at their surroundings rather than navigating menus or reading long descriptions on a small screen.

Users Can Add Their Own Memories to the Map

Wrinkles is also attempting to build a location-based social network. Users can attach photographs, videos, voice recordings and written memories to specific places, turning a house, restaurant, school or street corner into a permanent part of their personal map.

Families can collaborate on these entries to preserve stories connected to a childhood home, a first date, a hometown or a deceased relative. Public contributions can include local recommendations, historical details or personal accounts that other users may discover when visiting the same location.

The app’s newer “Lives” feature organises a person’s history as both a timeline and a geographical journey. Users can create a profile for a family member or historical figure and connect important moments in that person’s life to the locations where they occurred. Wrinkles says these contributions are moderated before becoming publicly visible.

This approach gives the platform a broader purpose than a conventional travel guide. It is effectively trying to create a living historical map containing both established cultural information and memories contributed by ordinary people.

Free Access Supported by Tourism Partners

Although Wrinkles has experimented with a freemium model, its founders say they want to keep the main consumer experience free. The company plans to generate most of its revenue from organisations that want to create their own location-based experiences.

Museums, hotels, universities and tourism boards can publish guided experiences on the platform without developing separate mobile applications. Media companies and creators can build sponsored guides, while businesses can attach booking, ticketing or reservation links to relevant locations. Wrinkles may receive a share of transactions completed through those links.

This business model could make Wrinkles attractive to smaller cultural organisations that cannot afford to build and maintain dedicated apps. Instead, they could add their content to an existing platform already designed around maps, audio and location tracking.

Location Features Bring Privacy Questions

The app’s central feature depends heavily on location data. According to its Google Play listing, Wrinkles may collect location, personal information and several other data categories, although the developer states that data is encrypted while being transferred and that users can request deletion.

Apple’s privacy disclosure states that information potentially linked to a user may include precise location, contact details, search history, identifiers, usage data and uploaded content. The amount collected may vary depending on which features a person uses.

That does not make Wrinkles unusual among travel and mapping apps, but the platform will need to clearly explain how location histories, family memories and user-generated recordings are stored and used as its audience grows.

AI Moves Beyond the Screen

Wrinkles reflects a broader shift in consumer AI. Many early AI applications focused on generating text, images or answers inside a chat window. Newer products are increasingly combining AI with cameras, maps, audio and real-time location data to interpret the physical world.

For Wrinkles, the opportunity lies in making AI feel less like a separate tool and more like an invisible layer over everyday places. The app is still at an early stage, but its database of 1.3 million locations gives it a substantial starting point.

Its long-term success will depend on the accuracy of its stories, the usefulness of its recommendations and whether people are comfortable allowing an AI guide to follow their location. If those challenges are managed well, Wrinkles could turn an ordinary street into something closer to an interactive museum, one that begins speaking as soon as a person starts walking.