It took a while, but Waze is finally making good on its promise to introduce safer reporting that’ll limit drivers’ interaction with their devices as much as possible. Announced in October last year, 9to5Google reports that ‘Conversational Reporting’ is rolling out to Waze users at this very moment after spending a year in beta.
Rather than tapping a series of buttons to report any traffic, potholes, police stops, and construction you might come across, all while attempting to keep your eyes on the busy highway, Conversational Reporting only requires a single button press to activate. The rest is up to you as you describe the issue by casually chatting to Waze.
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“Say you’re cruising down the highway and spot a sudden slowdown. All you need to do is tap the reporting button and speak naturally, as if you’re chatting with a friend: ‘Looks like there are cars jammed up ahead!’, ” Waze wrote in its initial announcement.
It’ll do so with the help of Google’s Gemini AI — not a surprise considering Google owns the maps app. More surprising is Google’s lack of adoption when it comes to Waze features, which tend to take larger risks in improving the user experience, despite being worked on by the same team as Google Maps.
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It can even ask follow-up questions if the AI feels your initial report wasn’t descriptive enough. You might hear a prompt like: “Can you describe what you see?” Sharing more information allows Waze to correctly categorise the issue and deploy a report in real-time based on your location, thus helping other drivers avoid it if at all possible.
While many have reported receiving the update over the past week, it seems Waze still has some refining to do. Some users have complained that the feature interrupts media playback, forcing them to interact with their devices again to resume playing their tunes. Others have noted an annoying pop-up notifying users of the ability, but which won’t disappear if users don’t turn it on. Again, defeating the purpose of the update.
