Waze adds Gemini-powered features to compete with Apple Maps

Waze, the Google-owned navigation app, is rolling out a set of AI-powered features and customization updates, including conversational road updates and personalized navigation. The app now suggests routes based on a user’s trip history and its reading of a city’s traffic patterns — for example, prioritizing highways for drivers who tend to favor them over local streets. Users who don’t want personalized suggestions can choose alternate routes or turn personalization off entirely in their settings. Personalized navigation is rolling out globally on Android and iOS.

Some of these features run on Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, reflecting the company’s push to weave Gemini into its products while helping Waze compete with Apple Maps, a rival navigation service. One such feature lets users find a destination through conversational search — asking for a coffee shop that’s open now, or the nearest gas station with the lowest prices — and getting a list of options back. That capability is rolling out to the Waze beta community globally on Android and iOS.

Waze is also expanding how users can report changes to the map itself. Alongside its existing ability to report traffic incidents by voice, the app now lets users flag road closures or outdated addresses conversationally — saying, for instance, that a road is closed, which gets routed to local map editors. This conversational map-update feature is rolling out globally on Android and iOS. A separate “less chatty” mode, also rolling out globally on both platforms, cuts down the frequency of voice prompts for drivers who want fewer interruptions, while still surfacing alerts for hazards and turns, just less often.

The most geographically limited addition is an AI-powered Motorcycle mode, built to account for two-wheeler-specific shortcuts and road restrictions and to deliver more accurate ETAs for riders. It also flags hazards that could be tricky for riders, like potholes, speed bumps, raised crosswalks, shoulder endings, and narrow bridges. Motorcycle mode is rolling out in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines on Android and iOS, with more countries on the way, Waze says.

Why it matters

Folding Gemini into Waze underscores Google’s broader push to integrate its AI assistant across its consumer products, and it gives Waze a sharper edge in its ongoing competition with Apple Maps.