Mercedes & ChatGPT – CarGPT

AI needs to reside in the vehicle to work well.

• Mercedes is exploring enabling ChatGPT in the vehicle but I think it should be looking at implementing it directly in the vehicle rather than the cloud-based service that it is going with today.
• Mercedes is running a beta program where those that opt in will be able to access ChatGPT from their vehicle by interacting with the voice assistant already present in MBUX-equipped vehicles.
• From June 16^th 2023, Mercedes owners in the USA will be to enrol in the test by telling their car which will then be enabled via an update.
• The test is due to run for three months and is being supported by Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service which is an API to which clients can connect their services to add generative AI functionality to them.
• Mercedes is able to implement this service very easily because all it is really doing is providing a prompt for the vehicle assistant to fill in, send to the cloud and then read out the results.
• This means that all of the inference or processing of the request will be done in the cloud with the voice assistant doing nothing more than acting as a front end to provide the voice functionality.
• RFM Research has identified the vehicle as a use case where generative AI could have a disproportionately large impact.
• This is because RFM Research has long concluded that a touch-based icon grid is a substandard user experience no matter who provides it.
• The problem that the car makers have is that their icon grid is much worse than Apple, Google or Tesla.
• Furthermore, in 2016 and 2017 RFM Research concluded that voice was the leading contender to improve the digital experience in the vehicle (see here) but that voice was not good enough to create an acceptable user experience (see here).
• This is why vehicles are still limping along with smartphones embedded in the dashboard.
• RFM Research has also concluded that generative AI represents a significant step forward in the ability of machines to communicate with humans and provide a user interface for a digital service (see here).
• Consequently, RFM Research concludes that generative AI offers a significant opportunity for vehicle makers to win back the digital initiative that they have ceded to the digital ecosystems.
• This is extremely important as I have long argued that vehicle makers’ ability to monetise the market for in-vehicle digital service will be contingent on their ability to remain relevant in the digital vehicle experience.
• This is why I believe that Apple and Google are coming aggressively after the vehicle and so far, the OEMs have mounted feeble resistance or offered complete capitulation.
• The problem with this approach is that RFM Research has concluded that the only way to implement generative AI effectively in the vehicle is put it directly in the vehicle.
• This is because reliability and speed are critical, and in this example when the network goes, the service goes with it.
• Furthermore, I think it unlikely that there will be any real integration with the vehicle meaning that telling ChatGPT that one is hot is likely to result in silence rather than the a/c being turned up.
• Using ChatGPT as the benchmark implementation in the vehicle will have a profound impact on the cost of the vehicle’s electronics as well as its power consumption which in an EV is a deal breaker.
• There are rapid developments going on in the open-source community that may make this a lot easier to achieve (see here) but implementing large language models outside of the data centre remains a work in progress.
• Despite the current limitations, I think that the potential for generative AI to help OEMs to overcome their digital shortcomings is substantial and represents one of the best opportunities the OEMs have had for a long time.
• The risk is that Mercedes runs its experiment, and no one uses it as a result of the way it has been implemented leading to the (wrong) conclusion that putting it in the vehicle is a waste of time.
• This would lead to the squandering of another opportunity leading to digital irrelevance and greater commoditisation.
• I remain pretty pessimistic about the outlook for the OEMs.