Volkswagen is putting ChatGPT into its cars

At the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Volkswagen unveiled its first set of vehicles with the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Chat GPT integrated into VW’s IDA voice assistant. Volkswagen says that in the future, VW owners will have seamless access to ChatGPT’s growing database in all models equipped with the IDA voice assistant. 

Now, that all sounds good and all but why? Apparently, the integration of the AI chatbot was so it could fill in the gaps of the IDA voice assistant. In cases where the Volkswagen system cannot fulfill a request, it is anonymously forwarded to ChatGPT and is then brought back to the voice assistant to relay the response.

If you’re still a bit lost on what ChatGPT is, here’s a refresher. ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by tech company OpenAI. The chatbot can be trained to do a variety of tasks from simple to complex like answering queries on historical facts or even have it write a set of computer programming codes. A godsend for the people still in college, probably.

Anyway, according to Volkswagen, the introduction of ChatGPT into the IDA voice assistant will allow it to go beyond its current basic capabilities. In the words of Volkswagen, the new system will offer examples like “Enriching conversations, clearing up questions, interacting in intuitive language, receiving vehicle-specific information, and much more — purely hands-free.”

Volkswagen adds that while the chatbot is integrated into the IDA voice assistant, it doesn’t gather information and does not have access to any vehicle data. Questions and answers asked by users will be promptly deleted to uphold the utmost data protection standards.

Now, you’re probably thinking that you’ll be able to ask the voice assistant about the wonders of procreation while on the road, well think again. Volkswagen’s partner, Cerence, has helped the automaker place restrictions on what the chatbot will answer, even on questions about other brands. 

Regarding future in-car assistants for Volkswagen, ChatGPT may only be the start of something much larger. Cerence CEO Stefan Ortmanns expressed that VW and Cerence “will explore collaboration to design a new, large-language-model-based (LLM) user experience as the foundation of Volkswagen’s next-generation in-car assistant." With that statement, we can expect an evolution of the IDA voice assistant with much more sophisticated functionality in the future.