If you’ve ever wanted to get driving advice from your car itself, you might not have to wait too much longer. Google and Mercedes-Benz announced this week that the automaker would begin integrating Google Cloud’s Automotive AI Agent with its onboard virtual assistant. The Mercedes-Benz CLA, set for release later in 2025, will be the first vehicle to include this feature.
According to Google’s announcement, the system will be able “to handle complex, multi-turn dialog and can retain memory of conversations.” The announcement offers an example of a driver asking if they’re near any Italian restaurants, with follow-up questions focusing on the reviews a restaurant has received and the popularity of dishes there.
“Our new Automotive AI Agent will help drivers navigate and search with in-vehicle assistants, so those interactions are more natural and helpful,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a statement. “This is just the beginning of how agentic capabilities can transform the automotive industry and I’m excited to see our partnership drive progress forward.”
At least some of this data already seems accessible via Google Maps; presumably, the advantages of this approach are the integration with the vehicle itself and the ability to operate it via voice commands only. Still, it’s not hard to imagine that some of the conversational memory features will alarm at least some drivers concerned about privacy.
Mercedes’s Secretive Mythos Will Debut in 2025
Mercedes-Benz first announced Mythos in 2022If you spent a lot of time listening to postpunk bands in the early 2000s, there’s another facet of this announcement that’s a little serendipitous. In the graphics Mercedes-Benz and Google created to accompany this announcement, they feature a driver querying the AI with the phrase “Hey Mercedes.” That’s also the name of a now-defunct Midwestern emo band, which means that you could presumably ask your car’s AI, “Hey Mercedes, play Hey Mercedes,” and you’d get some pretty excellent songs out of it.
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