[CES 2024] AI is coming to your car — and you can choose its personality

Automakers and tech companies showcased AI-equipped vehicles with personalized virtual assistants at CES 2024.

Visitors to CES 2024 take photos of LG Electronics’ Alpha-able concept car in Las Vegas. The trade show runs until Friday. [NEWS1]

LAS VEGAS — The next Big Tech battleground is on the road. But the fight is not over speed or fancy looks — it's over smarts.

Harman International's new Ready Care monitoring system, jointly developed with Samsung Electronics, is one big competitor. The service, showcased at Harman's CES 2024 booth in Las Vegas on Wednesday, can analyze your heartbeat and blood flow as you drive.

“You’re slightly sleepy and not visually focused,” it might alert you if you're not fully awake, activating your seat's massage function, blowing cold air on your neck and blasting loud music.

Mobility is a hot topic at CES this year. Not only are the biggest carmakers mixing their vehicles with AI, but cars are also on display at the booths of Big Tech names like Sony and Amazon, who are also making moves into automotive tech.

Harman’s Ready Care service analyzes drivers’ heartbeat and blood flow to tell their body conditions such as if they feel sleepy or visually focused on driving. [SARAH CHEA]

━ AI in cars

When walking into Amazon's booth on the CES show floor, you might not expect to see a BMW car.

But the company had one on display, equipped with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant.

“The company is currently developing the system to let the AI make more general conversations with the driver, not just some typical questions about the car,” an Amazon engineer said at the booth. Amazon and BMW aren't alone. AI was everywhere at this year's CES, with global automakers vying to showcase vehicles with the “most humanlike” assistants built in.

People look in a car used to demonstrate BMW's in-car personal assistant that uses Amazon's Alexa to answer questions about its cars at the BMW booth during the CES tech show Wednesday in Las Vegas. [AP/YONHAP]

Mercedes-Benz rolled out its upgraded Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX) virtual assistant that can take on four personalities — natural, predictive, personal and empathetic — at the trade show.

Drivers can choose one of the four depending on the type of conversations they want to have with their AI assistants. The predictive mode, for example, can play the morning's headlines when a driver enters their vehicle or offer to dial into a meeting if their calendar indicates that they're running late.

“AI will be in every aspect of our cars,” Markus Schaefer, Mercedes-Benz's chief technology officer said in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily.

Volkswagen announced that it will install OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its vehicles to “enrich conversations” starting in the second quarter of 2024.

The chatbot will be available across the automaker’s overall lineup including its Tiguan, Passat and Golf lines as well as the ID family of EVs. Europe will get the service first.

Hyundai Motor outlined its plans to convert all of its products to software-defined vehicles (SDVs) at CES 2024. SDVs, or what the industry calls “smartphones on wheels,” are equipped with an over-the-air (OTA) system that can update cars' software with the latest features over time.

Visitors to CES 2024 look at the Afeela concept EV from Sony Honda Mobility at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas. [NEWS1]

━ Cars to wine bars and cinemas

It's common to see mysterious concept cars on the CES floor. But they were in the booths of Big Tech companies this year, rather than mobility firms.

It's all part of the tech industry's growing understanding of cars not only as a means of transportation, but as a product that can change its purpose depending on customer needs.

LG Electronics revealed the Alpha-able concept car for the first time at this year’s show, which can serve as both a cinema and café, at least in their theory.

People can sit facing each other and collaborate on work while the car drives itself. They can also make coffee from a built-in coffee machine. The car can even serve as a theater, by way of a light matrix turned toward the wall, in the future LG envisions.

Visitors to CES 2024 take photos of LG Electronics’ Alpha-able concept car in Las Vegas. The trade show runs until Friday. [NEWS1]

Sony Honda Mobility displayed Afeela concept car, which is set to be shipping EVs in 2026.

People will be able to play Sony games inside the Afeela.

Sony Honda Mobility also announced that it has joined hands with Microsoft to develop an AI assistant for Afeela.

Over in Panasonic's booth, a transparent car mock-up showed off new battery charging technology. Panasonic supplies EV batteries to Tesla.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]