Waze Adds Gemini-Powered Motorcycle Mode and 'Less Chatty' Voice Guidance

Waze is adding a batch of AI-driven features powered by Google's Gemini model, continuing the same push Google Maps has made toward AI integration, according to Engadget.

The headline addition is Motorcycle Mode, which uses AI to account for the specific realities of riding a bike instead of driving a car. Google says the mode factors in motorcycle-only shortcuts and flags hazards that matter more to riders than drivers, including potholes, speed bumps, raised crosswalks, shoulder endings and narrow bridges, per Engadget's reporting.

Car-centric routing has never accounted for the fact that a pothole that's a minor annoyance in a sedan can be a genuine safety hazard on two wheels. Google says the feature still leans on a real-time traffic map and a team of human, motorcycle-focused editors to keep hazard data current, not just AI guesswork.

AI navigation tools have a track record of confidently sending drivers down closed roads, into lakes, or onto paths that don't exist, so pairing the AI layer with actual human editors is a reasonable check against the technology's known weak spot: sounding certain while being wrong.

Less Chatty, More Personalized

The second major change is a new "Less Chatty" voice guidance mode. Anyone who's used Waze knows the app can talk constantly, sometimes narrating every lane change and minor hazard. The new setting strips voice prompts down to the essentials, critical turns and major alerts, and skips the rest.

Waze is also rolling out personalized route suggestions that draw on a user's past trips, not just live traffic data. Google frames this as the app learning your preferences over time. Users who don't want it can turn it off, according to Engadget.

A navigation app quietly building a profile of your regular routes and habits is exactly the kind of feature that deserves a visible off-switch, and Google appears to have included one here rather than making personalization mandatory.

Gemini Gets a Bigger Voice

Waze has been testing "Conversational Reporting" since October 2024, letting drivers report traffic incidents using natural speech instead of tapping through menus, according to Engadget. That feature is now expanding to also handle map update suggestions through the same voice interface.

Gemini integration is also powering new voice search capabilities, letting users ask something like "find me a gas station nearby with the lowest prices" and get a tailored list of results back, rather than a generic list of nearby stations.

Who Gets What, and When

The rollout isn't uniform. Personalization features, Less Chatty mode, and Conversational Reporting are going out globally on both Android and iOS, according to Engadget. Gemini-powered voice search is limited to Waze's beta community worldwide for now.

Motorcycle Mode has the narrowest launch. It's rolling out specifically in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines, per Engadget's reporting. Those are all markets where motorcycles are a dominant mode of transportation, which explains the prioritization, but it also means U.S. riders aren't getting it in this wave.

Google hasn't given a timeline for when, or if, Motorcycle Mode will expand to the U.S. or Europe. Given how Google typically handles staged rollouts for Maps and Waze features, an eventual expansion is likely, but nothing has been announced. Riders in the U.S. are left waiting to see whether the feature performs well enough in its initial markets to justify a wider release, and whether the human-editor backstop scales as the feature grows.