Alphabet’s Google is offering essential features for an artificial intelligence assistant tailored for Volkswagen drivers via a smartphone app. This initiative is part of Google’s broader strategy to secure business by providing tools for creating enterprise AI applications.
Users can pose queries to Volkswagen’s in-app assistant, such as “How do I change a flat tyre?” or utilize their phone cameras to scan vehicle dashboards for pertinent information. The AI assistant leverages Google’s Gemini large language models, which can comprehend and generate predictive responses to human language, along with cloud computing resources. The VW tool was developed by integrating data like Volkswagen owner’s manuals and YouTube videos on vehicle maintenance into Gemini.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian informed Reuters that the product involved surmounting technical challenges related to multimodality, the capability to process various data types including text, images, and videos. “The problem appears deceptively simple, but it’s technically quite complex,” Kurian noted. “Most people assume we built a speech-to-text translation system that then refers to a manual. That’s not the case at all.”
The AI assistant is currently free and accessible to approximately 120,000 owners of Volkswagen’s Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport models. It is set to expand to other vehicles from model year 2020 and later by early next year. The adoption of generative AI by corporations could reshape the profitable cloud computing market, where Google currently ranks third in market share behind Amazon and Microsoft. Most companies are still exploring practical applications for users.
Cloud computing represents a growing business segment for Google, contributing $33 billion to the firm’s $307 billion total revenue in 2023. The company has reported that AI solutions have generated billions in revenue this year, though it has not provided specific figures.
