Volkswagen partners with Google to create AI assistant

Volkswagen and Google worked together to create a smartphone app with an AI assistant for VW drivers. 

While on the go, Volkswagen drivers can access the app and ask for help with their vehicles. Drivers will be able to ask the AI assistant simple questions. For example, they may ask, “How do I change a flat tire,” and YouTube videos about the subject will pop up on their phones. 

VW drivers can also use their phones to receive information about their VW vehicles. For instance, they could point their phone’s camera to the vehicle’s dashboard to obtain more data. 

Google and Volkswagen’s AI assistant utilized Alphabet’s Gemini large language models, which can understand and generate predictive responses to human language. The new AI assistant also uses Google’s cloud computing capacity. 

The new AI assistant is designed with data from Volkswagen, such as the automaker’s owners’ manuals for vehicles and YouTube videos on vehicle maintenance. VW’s data and the YouTube videos are uploaded to Gemini. 

“The problem looks superficially simple, but it’s technically very complex. Most people think what we built is a speech-to-text translation system that then looks up a manual. Absolutely not,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told Reuters. 

Google and Volkswagen’s AI assistant will be free to customers. It is currently available to about 120,000 Volkswagen Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport Models. The AI assistant will be launched in other cars from 2020 model-year units and later by early 2025.

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