For several years now, many brands have equipped their cars with new intelligent voice assistants that help improve the travel experience. While most of them have partnered with Amazon or Google, other car manufacturers, such as Mercedes-Benz or BMW, have chosen to develop their own system. And now they are also beginning to incorporate Chat GPT technology.
The first European firm to do so - although in the testing phase - has been DS Automobiles, which last October reported its integration into the DS Iris system, available in the DS 3, DS 4, DS 7 and DS 9 range. And now Volkswagen has announced it during the CES 2024 electronics fair, which is held in Las Vegas from January 9 to 12.
In this scenario, the German firm shows the first cars in which the ChatGPT chatbot based on artificial intelligence is integrated into its IDA voice assistant. Volkswagen will become the first high-volume manufacturer to equip ChatGPT as standard from the second quarter of 2024 in many production vehicles. Specifically, it will be offered together with the latest generation of the infotainment system in the electric models ID.7, ID.4, ID.5 and ID.3, the new Tiguan and the new Passat, as well as in the new Golf.
The integration, which has been enabled by Cerence Chat Pro, improves the travel experience by expanding the vehicle's ability to respond to the occupants' needs. While the IDA voice assistant serves to control the infotainment system, navigation and air conditioning, or to answer general knowledge questions, the ChatGPT integration will provide additional information in response to questions that go further as part of its capabilities in continuous expansion.
This can be useful on many levels during a car trip: enrich conversations, clarify doubts, interact with intuitive language, receive specific information about the vehicle and much more, in hands-free mode. Please note that ChatGPT does not have access to any vehicle data and questions and answers are immediately deleted to ensure the highest possible level of data protection.
Nothing changes for the person behind the wheel. There is no need to create a new account, install a new app or activate ChatGPT: the voice assistant is activated by saying “Hello IDA” or by pressing the button on the steering wheel. IDA automatically prioritizes whether to execute a vehicle function, search for a destination, or adjust the temperature. If the Volkswagen system cannot respond to the request, it is forwarded anonymously to the AI and the usual Volkswagen voice responds.
Looking ahead, Volkswagen and Cerence will together explore collaboration to design a new user experience based on full language models (LLM) as the basis of the next generation of Volkswagen's in-car assistant.
