German automaker Volkswagen announced at CES 2024 that it will add ChatGPT to its vehicles equipped with the IDA voice assistant. The ChatGPT integration with Volkswagen will go live in the second quarter of 2024 and will be available for the company's EV range, including the ID.7, ID.4, ID.5, ID.3 as well as the new Tiguan, Passat and Golf models. The new feature will first be available to users in Europe, while plans for the US are yet to be finalised.
ChatGPT-powered IDA voice assistant can be used for controlling basic functions like air conditioning, navigation, infotainment or answering questions related to general knowledge. However, the German automaker says ChatGPT-backed AI will gain new capabilities in the future which will lead to “Enriching conversations, clearing up questions, interacting in intuitive language, receiving vehicle-specific information, and much more – purely hands-free.”
Volkswagen's board member for technical development, Kai Gruentiz while speaking to Reuters said, "Our customers don't want to manually adjust their seats ... they want to use speech dialogue systems," he said.
"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… I think what our customers are really looking for is seamless, intuitive usage of their car." Gruentiz added.
Volkswagen has assured the users there would be no need to create a new account, install a new app or install ChatGPT for using the new feature instead they could activate the voice assistant by saying “Hello IDA” or pressing the button on the steering wheel.
Moreover, the company said that OpenAI will not get any access to vehicle data with questions and answers being deleted immediately in order to ensure ‘highest possible level of data protection’.
The new ChatGPT-enabled features to Volkswagen cars is made possible owing to software support from Cerence which makes ‘automative grade’ ChatGPT integrations, The Verge reported.
Meanwhile, a report by TechCrunch notes that Cerence has helped the German carmaker put restrictions on the chatbot for certain topics, such as profanity, sex or other sensitive issues like the Israel-Hamas war.
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