Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft announced on Thursday that they will begin a testing program on June 16, and they are collaborating to test in-car ChatGPT chatbots, according to the company, about 900,000 luxury models equipped with MBUX intelligent human-computer interaction systems are currently compatible with ChatGPT. Currently, only English is supported, and the trial is only available to owners of Mercedes-Benz cars equipped with MBUX in the United States, and the upgrade and use are free.
(Source: Mercedes-Benz official website)
The company said owners can wirelessly download ChatGPT via the Mercedes app or the phrase "HeyMercedes," as well as have a conversation with their car and opt in to the test program. The test will last for three months, during which Mercedes will understand how owners use the technology and will continue to improve it based on user feedback after the official launch. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, this is the first time ChatGPT has been used in a vehicle.
Mercedes-Benz itself originally had an MBUX voice assistant, an artificial intelligence that had previously set the industry standard and was known for its intuitive operation and huge command combination. Drivers and passengers can receive sports and weather forecasts, answer questions about their surroundings, and even use them to control their smart homes. Mercedes-Benz combines the two, with a more natural ChatGPT conversation format set on the MBUX voice assistant and enhanced data validation.
(Mercedes-Benz MBUX Intelligent Software)
If you have used car voice assistants before, then you must know that most car voice assistants are not very sensitive, can only understand a single instruction, and many times you have to use the simplest and most direct instructions, it can understand, the understanding of the sentence is not smooth enough, let alone can contact the context, and you have a natural dialogue.
Users can experience a smarter voice assistant that can not only accept natural voice commands, but also have conversations. And allow drivers to ask for destination information, suggest what to eat for dinner, or answer complex questions, and owners will get a more comprehensive and user-friendly answer. At the same time, you can leave your hands on the steering wheel, and your eyes only need to focus on the road conditions.
After the Mercedes-Benz automatic driving system is turned on, the vehicle can completely drive itself within the specified speed, the driver can send text messages, watch videos, play games, and if there is an accident, Mercedes-Benz will be responsible. From this point of view, Mercedes-Benz's L3 system truly achieves "semi-autonomous driving", while other brands such as Tesla's Autopilot can only be regarded as "assisted driving", and the driver is responsible for the accident.
Mercedes-Benz's priority is to protect data. Customers need to know at all times what information Mercedes collects and for what purposes, and they can decide for themselves whether to allow the information to be collected. Mercedes-Benz protects all customer data from tampering and misuse, all conversations are stored only locally and in Mercedes-Benz cloud services, and Mercedes guarantees that it will not share this data with any third-party services.
Similar to other industries, the potential application of ChatGPT in the automotive industry has been increasingly discussed. While some car companies, such as General Motors, say their self-driving cars already use advanced artificial intelligence, the collaboration between Mercedes and Microsoft represents it as one of the first specific use cases for ChatGPT.
Mercedes officials also said that the results of the test plan will provide reference information for ChatGPT to be added to other countries and plans in other languages, which means that if the test goes well, this feature is expected to be extended to more countries and more cars.
Markus Schäfer, Member of the Board of Directors and Chief Technology Officer of Mercedes-Benz AG, said: "We are the first car brand to do this. Of course, safety comes first for us, and we will monitor the performance of this automated driving system at all times. He also said that he is now communicating with relevant departments in Beijing to see if he can get L3 test permission in Beijing. Chinese consumers love new technologies, and we're looking forward to seeing more of them in cars sold in China. ”
At present, all Mercedes models equipped with MBUX intelligent human-computer interaction system are:
A238、C118、C167、C238、C253、C254、C257、H247、N293、R232、S213、V167、V177、V295、V297、W206、W213、WV223、X167、X243、X247、X253、X254、X294、X296、Z223、Z296
Editor's comment: The boom and development trend of AI is obvious to all, and now that even the automotive industry has gradually penetrated, we may be able to start looking forward to the new gameplay brought by the addition of ChatGPT. Presumably, every car user hopes to have an "intelligent assistant" that can understand people's words when driving! Mercedes-Benz is likely to be one of the first brands to access ChatGPT technology, and it cannot be ruled out that more brands will join this technology. If it were you, would you buy a car for AI?