Google, Volkswagen Partner on Smartphone AI Assistant

The AI assistant is free and available to about 120,000 owners of Volkswagen’s Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport models.

By Reuters | Updated: 25 September 2024 16:28 IST

Google, Volkswagen Partner on Smartphone AI Assistant

Photo Credit: Reuters

Volkswagen plans to roll out its AI assistant to other cars by early next year

Highlights

AI solutions have driven billions in revenue this year for Google
Volkswagen has not given elaborate details on its AI assistent
Google wishes to offer tools for enterprise AI applications

Alphabet's Google is providing key capabilities for an Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant for Volkswagen drivers in a smartphone app, part of Google's strategy to win business by offering tools to build enterprise AI applications.

Consumers can ask Volkswagen's in-app assistant questions like “How do I change a flat tire?” or point their phone cameras at vehicle dashboards to receive relevant information.

The AI assistant draws on Google's Gemini large language models, programs that can understand and generate predictive responses to human language, and cloud computing capacity.

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The VW tool was designed by adding data such as Volkswagen owner's manuals and YouTube videos on vehicle maintenance to Gemini.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told Reuters that the product required overcoming technical hurdles to multimodality, the ability to process different data types such as text, images and videos.

"The problem looks superficially simple, but it's technically very complex,” Kurian said. “Most people think what we built is a speech-to-text translation system that then looks up a manual. Absolutely not.”

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The AI assistant is free and available to about 120,000 owners of Volkswagen's Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport models. It will roll out by early next year to other cars from model year 2020 and later.

Corporate adoption of generative AI could alter the lucrative cloud computing market, where Google places third in terms of market share behind Amazon and Microsoft. Most companies are still searching for applications that users will find practical.

Cloud computing is a growing business segment for Google, accounting for $33 billion (roughly Rs. 2,75,989 crore) of the firm's $307 billion (roughly Rs. 25,67,539 crore) in overall revenue in 2023.

AI solutions have driven billions in revenue this year, the company has said, though it declined to disclose more precise figures.

Volkswagen declined to give details about usage for its AI assistant so far.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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