- BMW used this week’s CES consumer electronics show to announce an in-car assistant that can hold conversations with drivers.
- It’s not the first we’ve seen, but it’s part of a growing trend.
Driver: “Hey, BMW, can you make my seat warmer, turn the massage on, and put the colors in the car to my favorite soccer team?”
Car: “Seat heating and massage are on. Red lights for your favorite soccer team.”
Driver: “Great, thank you.”
Car: “Happy to help. Enjoy your cozy ride.”
That’s how BMW chose to demonstrate its newest project at this week’s CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas.
The BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant uses Amazon’s AI Alexa+ architecture to enable you to give a car conversational commands.
The assistant handles “both the operation of vehicle functions as well as access to information and knowledge beyond the vehicle,” the company says. It can process multiple commands in a single sentence, and link to an owner’s Amazon account to “search for and stream music, retrieve public news, and access a wide range of other content.”
It will appear first on the upcoming BMW iX3 in the U.S. and Germany “in the second half of 2026,” the company says, “Other markets and model series will follow gradually.”
Mercedes, VW, Rivian All Have Something Similar
- Other automakers are pursuing similar technology, with some projects already in owners’ driveways.
The technology is impressive, but not unique.
Volkswagen debuted a ChatGPT-driven personal assistant in 2024. Mercedes launched its own natural language voice assistant later that same year. Startup Rivian premiered its own version last month.
BMW’s demonstrations appear to show less latency than the existing technologies we’ve tested; however, we should note that the company showcased the system in a video where it could tightly control the conditions.
We look forward to bringing you a more challenging demonstration when we get our hands on the iX3 later this year.
