The BMW Group has announced the introduction of the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant — a new proprietary in-car Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant.

BMW says the ‘always on-call technology platform’ is an intelligent, digital character that responds to the prompt “Hey BMW” and has the ability to serve the driver in a range of ways from controlling vehicle settings, navigation and entertainment systems to explaining vehicle functions and even conducting a conversation.

The company claims that, in the future, the Intelligent Personal Assistant will be available to driver’s outside their vehicle too, whether it’s at home with the help of a smart speaker or via a smartphone. It will also be compatible with other digital voice assistants, providing a link to other rapidly growing ecosystems.

A link-up with BMW’s Open Mobility Cloud means the personal assistant’s capabilities will be consistently enhanced and grow with the user over time. Regular updates will keep expanding the range of functions and skills available.

The Intelligent Personal Assistant will, says BMW, learn routines and habits so that it can apply them in the appropriate context. It helps the driver, learns their preferences and is familiar with their preferred vehicle settings – for example, seat heating preferences or frequent destinations. Saying “Hey BMW, I’m cold” will prompt the Intelligent Personal Assistant to adjust the temperature inside the car accordingly.

It is able to explain different functions (“How do the Automatic Highbeams work?”), provide current status information (“Is the oil level okay?”) and help answer questions (“What warning messages do I have?”). It can, says BMW, even activate a combination of them. For example, saying “Hey BMW, I feel tired” triggers a ‘vitality’ program that adjusts the lighting mood, music and temperature, among other things, in order to make the driver feel more awake.

Drivers will even be able to name their Intelligent Personal Assistant to assign even more individual character and personality.

BMW says that ongoing improvement of the technology will enable it to learn more preferences and favourite settings. The assistant will improve with every command given, question asked, and setting made. Forming the basis for all of this will be the portable, digital customer profile – the BMW ID – which links the car to the customer and their digital world.

The Intelligent Personal Assistant will become available in a basic version in 23 languages and markets in March 2019. In the USA, Germany, UK, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Brazil, Japan and (beginning in May 2019) China, the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant will feature more natural voice control along with further intelligent functions such as Point of Interest Search, Weather and Music. The personal assistant will be offered for models featuring the new BMW iDrive 7.0 and as part of the Live Cockpit Professional.

Source: Motor Trade E-Magazine (October Edition)

5 Oct 2018