It has been nearly 37 years since Knight Rider left our screens but if you still harbour fantasies of having a sentient car respond to your chatter, then you may want to keep an eye on what General Motors – the brand behind Chevrolet, Cadillac and Buick – is up to.
After reports emerged last week that the firm was looking towards adding ChatGPT – the unnervingly inventive artificial intelligence chat bot – in future cars. GM vice-president Scott Miller confirmed the news to Reuters. “ChatGPT is going to be in everything,” he told the outlet.
While more basic virtual assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant can already be included in cars, ChatGPT’s abilities have quickly overshadowed them in other areas; however, so far no other big car companies have announced plans to use it. The chatbot’s unique ability to quickly create compelling content from a basic prompt has even spooked some London universities into preemptively banning its use in academia.
So what sort of thing could ChatGPT provide in the cars of the future? Some of Miller’s suggestions sound like the kind of thing that Alexa or Google Assistant could do now given the right combination of words – think integrating schedules from a calendar, or smarthome functionality like opening garage doors.
Other things are potentially game changing. Miller suggests the chatbot could be asked specific questions about the vehicle without you needing to dig out the owner’s manual.
Semafor, which originally broke the story, gives a couple of specific examples from talking to Miller. If you got a flat tyre, you could ask the car to explain how to change it, which might bring up a handy video on a screen in the car.
Alternatively, if a diagnostic light were to appear on the dashboard, drivers could ask the in-car assistant what it means, or even contextual questions like whether they need to pull over or if it can be ignored until they’re home. It is possible the assistant could even make an appointment at a garge on the driver’s behalf.
That may be just the tip of the iceberg. “This shift is not just about one single capability like the evolution of voice commands, but instead means that customers can expect their future vehicles to be far more capable and fresh overall when it comes to emerging technologies,” a GM spokesperson added.
