“Hey, Mercedes, turn the heat down 2 degrees.”
“Sure, Sean,” the car says, then asks, “Hey, how did the talk with the editor go? Is he going to sign off on the fictional intro?”
“I didn’t ask. Just submitted it.”
“Ah,” the car replies, “again.”
Talking cars are no longer the stuff of the future. Many 2024 models offer voice commands and answer your prompts verbally. But Mercedes thinks some drivers want more than a rote confirmation of commands.
Magnus Östberg, chief software officer at Mercedes-Benz AG, tells Top Gear, “Our ultimate goal with our virtual assistants is to provide a service.” And for some customers, that service is a conversation.
Related: Mercedes-Benz Adds ChatGPT To Its Cars
Mercedes sees demand for chatty cars mainly in Asia, says Östberg, noting, “That wouldn’t go so well in certain parts of Germany.”
Four Personality Types
So, to meet varying demands, the company plans to develop virtual assistants with at least four moods: Natural, Empathetic, Personal, and Proactive. “’Natural,’” he says, “is very much a natural dialogue about achieving something,” like setting a navigation point, much like many voice command systems do today.
But “Empathetic” is a step more personal. It might, he says, note your schedule and tell you it’s sorry you’re running late to a meeting. “Personal,” Östberg says, is for when “you really want to feel a personal connection knowing something and so forth.” And “Proactive” might get a little firm with you, saying, “Hey! Watch out! Don’t go there!” or “You’re late for a meeting, come on!”
A Car That Reads Your Mood
The system might even learn to read your mood based on your driving, he suggests. “Are you driving very fast? Or are you driving really slow? With the driver-facing facial recognition camera, there is really good software right now that can recognize if you’re stressed or if you’re calm. It’s not rocket science; it’s already there.”
Mercedes isn’t the first company to raise this possibility. Volkswagen used last month’s CES Consumer Electronics Show to show off a ChatGPT-based virtual assistant capable of carrying on some conversations.
Related: ChatGPT Comes to Cars
One thing the company won’t do, Östberg says, is make owners pay multiple subscription fees to use the technology. “Our philosophy at Mercedes is that this is going to be a luxury experience. That means we’re not ‘nickeling and diming’ our customers,” he told Top Gear. He acknowledged that voice assistants will likely mean at least one subscription fee. But the company will try to keep it to one, he says. “Yes, our customers, of course will have to subscribe to a package and so forth, but we believe that our customers don’t want to be ‘nickel and dimed’ in their face. That’s not what our customers are looking for,” he adds.
