Mercedes-Benz car and sport utility vehicle (SUV) owners are now able to use ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) in their vehicles. The company began installing the technology in 900,000 cars on Friday. It is considered a beta program.
The announcement and implementation come as businesses around the world, in the automotive industry and beyond, are working to understand and harness the power of the quickly evolving technology, which is surging in popularity.
In May, SimilarWeb, a website user tracking company, calculated that there are over 100 million ChatGPT users worldwide. The technology's website generates 1.8 billion hits per month, up 180 percent since February 2023. It launched in November 2022.
ChatGPT's key competitors include Amazon CodeWhisperer, ChatSonic API and Google Bard.
The AI is used in Mercedes vehicles via the company's MBUX Voice Assistant control. Voice Assistant is verbally triggered for use by a driver uttering the "Hey Mercedes" verbal command.
Voice Assistant is already used to give customers sports and weather updates, have questions answered, and control some functions of the vehicle, like the climate control settings.
Soon, users will be able to use the Voice Assistant to reveal details about their destination and ask it to propose a new dinner recipe or answer a complex question.
Using Voice Assistant allows drivers to keep their hands and eyes on the road ahead.
The technology works by using a large language model to create a more natural dialogue than Voice Assistant would typically be capable of. The result is a voice assistant that accepts natural voice commands and creates a conversation between the technology and the user that simulates human-to-human interaction.
Mercedes-Benz is using Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service to integrate ChatGPT. The automaker says that the use of Microsoft's product allows them to take advantage of the company's "enterprise-grade security, privacy and reliability capabilities".
Complete control over the information technology process that operate in the background of the system will remain under the control of Mercedes-Benz.
Voice command data will be stored in the Mercedes-Benz Intelligent Cloud, where the company says it is anonymized and analyzed.
Mercedes-Benz's Chief Technology Officer over development and procurement, Markus Schäfer, is pledging that customers are "free to make their own decisions" regarding data protection saying that they will know "at all times what information is collected and for what purpose". He also promises that it "protects all customer data from manipulation and misuse".
Shäfer additionally serves as a member of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG.
The ChatGPT beta program is expected to last three months, the company says. During that time, Mercedes-Benz expects to gain "helpful insights"into requests users are making, which will enable to them to prioritize future development of voice assistant software.
