- Conversational Reporting will let you submit road reports using Gemini to process your voice input.
- The system does not require any specific syntax, and can ask follow-up questions for more detail.
- Waze is also looking to improve safety with school zone alerts.
It’s something of a small miracle that Waze hasn’t just managed to continue existing in the decade-plus since Google acquired the app, but that it’s actually managed to thrive. All too often, Google acquisitions are digested and merged with the company’s existing offerings, and yet Google Maps and Waze continue to both succeed, side-by-side. Today we’re learning about a bunch of updates coming to Google Maps, including some expanded reporting tools for weather-related incidents. But Maps is not about to steal Waze’s incident-reporting thunder, as Waze itself picks up a powerful new feature in the form of Conversational Reporting.
Waze is only as useful as the reports feeding it info make it, so the app is always interested in that process being as streamlined as possible. So far, though, there hasn’t been a great way to do make reports without pulling over first to safely use your phone. While Waze formally supports Google Assistant voice input, we’ve seen lots of comments from users struggling to get this to work correctly, and even then, submitting reports requires users are aware of the correct syntax.