Waze's Conversational Reporting feature and Less Chatty option.
(Credit: Google)
A new round of features for Waze aims to take Google's driving app in a more personalized direction–with AI riding shotgun.
The most significant change is one that people more familiar with Google Maps might have thought was already a Waze feature: the option of driving directions tailored to your earlier use of the app.
“Now, Waze will suggest routes based on your previous trips, in addition to its hyperlocal understanding of a city’s traffic patterns,” Google says. “So if you prefer driving on highways over local streets with multiple stops, you’ll see those suggested first.”
Two other changes involve Waze’s voice interface and let you make your in-car experience more or less verbose, as you wish. A “less chatty” mode will have the app reduce its voice prompts to “critical reminders about hazards, turns, and lane changes”—delivered, per Google’s post, less often than by default.
Google is also expanding the Conversational Reporting feature, based on the company's Gemini AI models, beyond its current support for reporting traffic issues in simple spoken-word speech. You’ll now also be able to request map revisions to reflect changes, such as a road being closed, by talking to the app.
The Mountain View, California, firm is now turning on all three of these options worldwide in Waze’s Android and iOS apps, while two additional updates are a little farther down the road.
A conversational voice search, now coming to drivers signed up to test beta versions of Waze, will let you ask queries like “Find me a gas station nearby with the lowest prices.” The description of this Gemini-enabled feature evokes the Ask Maps features added to Google Maps in March, but it’s unclear how long it will take to reach general availability in Waze.
Waze is also applying AI to help its motorcycle users with directions better tailored to their smaller vehicles and alerts of hazards riskier for riders than drivers, such as “potholes, speed bumps, raised crosswalks, shoulder endings, and narrow bridges.” Waze users in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines should now start seeing this in their apps, while riders in the US will have to wait a little longer.
Google spent nearly $1 billion to buy Waze in 2013, but Monday’s updates continue to leave Waze behind Google Maps in certain navigation features. With gas prices as high as they are, two continued Waze shortfalls stand out: Its directions still don’t highlight the most fuel-efficient route, something Google Maps added in October 2021, and it still doesn’t let drivers of hybrid or electric vehicles further optimize its directions for their choice of powertrain.
About Our Expert
Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
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