Companies
09/01/2024

Volkswagen Vehicles Will Communicate With Drivers Using ChatGPT By Mid-Year




Volkswagen's voice assistant, which incorporates ChatGPT into its vehicles, will be able to talk with customers in a back-and-forth discussion by the middle of the year, the automaker announced on Monday while presenting the technology in Las Vegas.
 
At the CES electronics trade show, Volkswagen unveiled its first vehicles with ChatGPT, which will be accessible to customers in North America and Europe in the early second quarter of this year.
 
According to executives from Volkswagen and Cerence (CRNC.O), which collaborated with Volkswagen on the technology, the AI can recognise and respond to a variety of demands, from raising the temperature when it hears "I'm feeling cold" to showing the nearest Indian restaurant when it hears "I want butter chicken".
 
Customers may now alter vehicle functions without touching a button, according to Kai Gruenitz, a Volkswagen brand board member for technical development, who spoke to Reuters on the sidelines of the CES trade fair.
 
"Our customers don't want to manually adjust their seats ... they want to use speech dialogue systems," he said.
 
Critics argue that while adding generative AI to vehicles is a step forward from current interactions, it falls well short of the AI leap predicted a few years ago, particularly with completely autonomous vehicles. Automobile manufacturers disagree.
 
"So if you have Apple CarPlay or Android or something, you are not able to adjust functionalities inside of the vehicle. That's the next step," Gruenitz said. "I think what our customers are really looking for is seamless, intuitive usage of their car."
 
Volkswagen claimed to be the first volume manufacturer to include the technology as standard in its compact category vehicles. Last March, General Motors said that it was developing a virtual personal assistant using the AI models behind ChatGPT.
 
Last June, Mercedes-Benz conducted a pilot programme in which about 900,000 vehicles equipped with the automaker's "MBUX" system were able to download ChatGPT, with the goal of allowing users to make movie or restaurant reservations while driving.
 
(Source:www.marketscreener.com) 

Christopher J. Mitchell
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