Premium automaker DS is testing generative AI ChatGPT in conjunction with its built-in voice assistant

Premium automaker DS is testing generative AI ChatGPT for six months in conjunction with its built-in voice assistant. With the hope of improving communication between the car and its passengers.

Since mid-October, premium automaker DS has been offering its voluntary customers the opportunity to test a version of its Iris voice assistant augmented with generative AI ChatGPT.

One of the first beta testers is Yves Bonnefont, chief software officer of Stellantis, owner of DS. "It helps me to find a restaurant with certain characteristics," he explained to En Route Pour Demain. "It's a dialogue around my request, which is refined in the conversation, and then once the right restaurant is found, we transfer it directly to the GPS." Another feature: ChatGPT allows Iris to invent a story from scratch to entertain passengers.

If these functions seem a bit "gadget" at first glance, they provide real comfort, according to Yves Bonnefont.

"What's nice is the context is maintained in the conversation with the car," he continued. "It's like a conversation. On the second question, the machine knows the context of the first."

And to avoid, for example, searching on your smartphone to find the right restaurant, and then entering it into the GPS, a dangerous behavior while driving.

However, to make sure that ChatGPT doesn't tell outright lies, as generative AIs can do, a number of filters are introduced into the system, explains Yves Bonnefont.

DS will conduct in-depth interviews with its customers, as well as generic data analyses at the end of the six-month testing period.

For the use of data related to more specific recommendations, according to the customer's profile, this will be "with the customer's consent," the chief software officer of Stellantis specifies. He sees this as a strategy for a tech company, which is what the automotive group claims to be becoming.

According to Yves Bonnefont, "the whole field of speech recognition, dialogue, and generative AI allows for this contextual dialogue. It's not specific to the automotive industry. We're going to see more and more of them in everyday life," he points out.

"This is not our core business in the automotive industry, there are AI applications that are much more core business for us, such as autonomous driving, with perception around the vehicle," Yves Bonnefont clarifies. "There, we are 'core business' for the manufacturer and there, we have internalized at Stellantis."

Mercedes has also chosen to introduce ChatGPT into its vehicles in the United States. Like DS, the AI will be coupled with voice recognition in the vehicle.

But the German brand adds a brick, as it wants to use it in its factories. The goal is to better process data from the production system, while making the communication interface easier for factory workers. This phase of testing was launched at the beginning of the summer.

The six-month testing period for DS is scheduled to end in April 2024. The company will then decide whether to roll out the technology to all of its vehicles.