GM Reportedly Working On ChatGPT-Style Assistance For Vehicles

General Motors seems to think you need a chatty virtual assistant in the car, one that borrows its skills from OpenAI's ChatGPT. Semafor reports that the carmaker is developing an in-car personal assistant that lives in Microsoft's Azure cloud, and has been built atop the same AI models as ChatGPT. General Motors joined hands with Microsoft over autonomous vehicle tech two years ago, while Microsoft itself has been pumping billions into OpenAI, and has finally started reaping the benefits with products like Bing Chat.

"ChatGPT is going to be in everything," says GM Vice President Scott Miller (per Reuters). General Motors has been trying to one-up Tesla at making a smarter driver assistance system, but it appears that ChatGPT has opened another hot new avenue where it can meaningfully challenge the Elon Musk-led company. 

"Customers can expect their future vehicles to be far more capable and fresh overall when it comes to emerging technologies," a GM spokesperson was quoted as saying in the same report (via Reuters). That being said, the vehicle giant isn't just planning to port ChatGPT over to the digital console in its cars. Instead, the company plans to give it a distinct automobile makeover.

Making lives easier for drivers with AI

With an assistant as smart as ChatGPT baked into the car's own infotainment software, drivers will get so much more than just asking it to play a song from Spotify. For example, users can simply ask the assistant to explain car features to them, instead of burdening them with volumes of paper-based manuals or boring instructional videos. 

In fact, the assistant could perform far smarter tasks like scheduling a charging session, or repair shop visit, based on available calendar slots. The innovation would also come in handy for emergency scenarios. The ChatGPT-fueled in-car assistant could even offer step-by-step guidance if one runs into hardware issues like engine or tire malfunctions. 

This could either be done with vocal cues, or the assistant simply pulling up the relevant brand support video on a digital dashboard. However, it is unclear when exactly GM will showcase it's next-gen car assistant in action, and more importantly, if it will be integrated with its driver-assistance systems. 

Earlier this week, General Motors introduced the next iteration of its advanced driver assistance (ADAS) technology named Ultra Cruise, which succeeds the Super Cruise tech. It wouldn't be surprising if the company keeps the ChatGPT-powered assistant system exclusive to its luxe future offerings, such as the Cadillac Celestiq.