Google has announced two new upcoming features for its mobile Waze app for iPhone and Android, conversational reporting and school zones on the map.

“Waze has one of the most passionate mapping communities in the world, with drivers who actively report road incidents and editors who add critical local information to the map, like new roads and sharp curves,” Google explains. Over the years, we’ve launched updates to help drivers get around more safely and confidently — and today, we’re adding two new features to keep drivers up to date on their journeys.”

With the new Conversational Reporting feature, you can speak naturally to report incidents. It makes for a safer driving experience; you can report withyour voice, keeping your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. Before, reporting traffic, potholes, construction, and similar road indicates required your attentiveness and tapping through the interface.

Hit the new reporting button and speak naturally as if chatting with a real person. Sentences such as, “Looks like there are cars jammed up ahead!” will do the trick. Waze will ask follow-up questions, like “Can you describe what you see?” if it needs more information. “Waze will understand what you’re saying and quickly add a real-time report to the map for you—no need to use a specific voice command or tap extra buttons,” the company said. These natural language capabilities use Google’s Gemini large language models.

Another new feature in Waze is School Zones, which lets editors add busy zones like zones to the map to help drivers take extra precautions. Waze will notify you when “driving near a school when it’s open and we have information for that school zone available.”

Unfortunately, the new features are not immediately available. Conversational Reporting will be available in beta to Waze testers in English on Android and iOS this week. The beta will add more languages and expand its availability “in the coming months.” As for School Zones, this feature will be released in stages on Android and iOS globally “later this year.”

Waze is well regarded for its crowdsourced traffic reporting capabilities. Even Google Maps took years to add an incident reporting button to quickly report police presence, speed cameras, car wrecks, and the like.

Source: Google