“Hey, Mercedes, where should I go for dinner?” you ask.
“There’s nothing else on your calendar tonight, so you seem to have time. If you do not want to spend much, I found a food truck festival just half a mile off your route home from work. If you are looking for a full-service restaurant experience, a new Thai fusion restaurant near your office got a good review in the paper last week. Shall I make a reservation for you?”
The scene is science fiction for now. But maybe not for long. Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft have announced a partnership to add ChatGPT to Mercedes-Benz cars in the United States starting immediately.
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From Voice Commands to Conversations
All 2023 Mercedes cars already have the “Hey, Mercedes” voice command system. It allows drivers to use voice commands to control some in-car functions, like adjusting the temperature or finding a radio station. But Mercedes says the large language model will make the system “more intuitive” and capable of answering in natural-sounding speech.
“While most voice assistants are limited to predefined tasks and responses, ChatGPT leverages a large language model to greatly improve natural language understanding and expand the topics to which it can respond,” Mercedes says.
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That, Mercedes says, includes conducting conversations with your car like you’re 1980s David Hasselhoff (look it up, youngsters).
The program launches today for 900,000 owners of cars equipped with the MBUX infotainment system. To sign up, say, “Hey, Mercedes, I want to join the beta program.”
Related: BMW iDrive 8 Will Use Natural Language Voice Commands
Will Mercedes be listening to your conversations? The company says voice command data “is stored in the Mercedes-Benz Intelligent Cloud, where it is anonymized and analyzed,” so Mercedes analysts can’t track who had which conversation.
If you haven’t signed up for the Mercedes me connect service, the company says, “there will be no data transmission from the vehicle” except for emergency communications.
