Google, Volkswagen partner on smartphone AI assistant By Reuters

By Kenrick Horses

SAN FRANCISCO – Alphabet (NASDAQ:) Google is providing key capabilities for an artificial intelligence driver assistant to Volkswagen (ETR:) in a smartphone app, part of Google’s strategy to win business by providing tools to build AI applications for enterprises.

Consumers can ask questions to the Volkswagen in-app assistant, such as “How do I change a flat tire?” or point your phone cameras at vehicle dashboards to receive relevant information.

The AI ​​assistant is based on Google’s Gemini large language models, programs that can understand and generate predictive responses to human language, and cloud computing capability.

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

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told Reuters the product requires overcoming technical hurdles in multimodality, the ability to process different types of data such as text, images and video.

“The problem seems simple on the surface, but it is very complex from a technical point of view,” Kurian said. “Most people think that what we’ve built is a speech-to-text translation system that then looks up a manual. Absolutely not.”

AI Assistant is free and available to approximately 120,000 owners of Volkswagen Atlas (NYSE: ) and Atlas Cross Sport models. It will roll out early next year on other 2020 and later model year cars.

Corporate adoption of generative AI could change the lucrative cloud computing market, where Google ranks third in market share behind Amazon (NASDAQ: ) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: ). Most companies are still looking for applications that users will find practical.

Cloud computing is a growing business segment for Google, accounting for $33 billion of the company’s total revenue of $307 billion in 2023.

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

Volkswagen has so far refused to provide details about the use of its AI assistant.