TomTom wants to build an AI-powered assistant for more sophisticated voice interactions into your future car.

Generative AI for everyone. After ChatGPT and your laptop, your future car will also have an AI assistant if it relies on TomTom. The company is working on a solution that will enable better voice interaction than is possible today. You can use natural questions and answers to navigate a route, select stops along the way, turn on dashboard systems, open windows, and virtually any other function in your car today.

To achieve this, TomTom is working with Microsoft. The technology is developed based on OpenAI’s LLM in combination with Microsoft products, including Azure Cosmos DB as a multimodal database and Azure Cognitive Services for APIs in AI applications.

TomTom emphasizes that the assistant will not be generic. This allows each car manufacturer to customize the model to implement their own branding. There are no signed collaborations yet. The technology is provided in TomTom’s own Digital Cockpit, an open and modular in-car infotainment system. This way, manufacturers can get started.

Car manufacturers traditionally react very slowly to new technologies. The chance that TomTom will be able to show something on the road next year seems slim to us. KITT remains a dream for now.

Mercedes has been testing a beta phase since June 16, 2023 to integrate ChatGPT in combination with the current MBUX voice assistant into its cars. Currently only American customers can participate. This service also uses Microsoft Azure, more precisely the Azure OpenAI Service.