BMW says that it has developed 'the ultimate vehicle expert' with the help of Amazon. The new in-car digital voice control assistant, which gets the slightly clunky name of BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant, has been co-developed with Amazon using that tech company's Alexa Large Language Model (LLM). The system is being shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week.
Alexa Large Language Model
In theory, that allows the car's computer to understand colloquial conversation better than before, and it should be able to respond to you in kind. The system uses a form of generative artificial intelligence - similar tech to that used by ChatGPT - but BMW wants to reassure its customers that the machines are neither going to take over, nor nick all your information: "The BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant has been using artificial intelligence for speech processing for a long time and this demo is the latest proof point of the continued innovation BMW and its partners are bringing to customers. Complex processing capabilities, which enable human-like interactions and dialogs, have not yet been integrated into BMW series vehicles. Such capabilities are now made possible by LLMs, which are AI models that are designed to process human language at a high level and generate responses accordingly. The BMW Group is also taking careful steps to build a safe and trusted experience for customers, and continues to test and iterate these LLM capabilities over time with its partners," said a BMW spokesperson.
That new voice control assistant will become part of the BMW Operating System 9 software, which is currently being rolled out. That software allows for ever-expanding in-car tech, some of which BMW is also showing off at the CES.
Use a gaming controller
That includes an upgrade to the gaming functionality included in the software. First demonstrated in the BMW i5 electric car, the gaming setup is supposed to give drivers and passengers a way to pass the time while charging, and so far, it was worked by linking your smartphone to the car's AirConsole App and using it as a game-pad. The next iteration will allow you to link a proper gaming controller - the likes of which we're all familiar with thanks to Xbox and PlayStation - to play the in-car games. At the CES, BMW is showing off Beach Buggy Racing 2, which allows two players to race against one another on a split-screen layout.
BMW has already rolled out in-car television, by connecting the huge optional rear video screen in the i7 and 7 Series to an Amazon Fire Stick, but now there will be streaming services for the centre screen in the front (for use only when parked, of course). BMW is already working with TiVo to develop this, and the streaming setup will allow for a variety of live TV feeds and content libraries, differing from market to market. Streaming will be rolled out by an over-the-air software update throughout 2024, and will be included in all future BMW and MINI models.
There's also a demonstration of the use of virtual reality glasses, which BMW is kind of pitching as a possible replacement or adjunct to the head-up display. Through the glasses, BMW says that drivers can be shown "navigation instructions, hazard warnings, entertainment content, information on charging stations and supporting visualisations in parking situations." The tech is tricky, but BMW says that its "engineers, together with their development partners, have now succeeded in showing stable augmented reality and mixed reality content to passengers in a dynamically moving vehicle for the first time. The displayed image remains securely embedded in the environment even in challenging driving situations, such as when turning, driving over large bumps or accelerating. To achieve this, the tracking system of the Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality device in question has to be linked to the vehicle's sensor data."
Augmented reality
"Thanks to the recent research collaborations with Meta Reality Labs and XREAL, we have made considerable progress in our preparations for integrating external XR devices into our driving experience in production models. We are proud to be leading the way here and are well prepared to offer our customers breathtaking XR experiences in the future," said Peter Lehnert, Vice President Research, New Technologies and Innovations Digital Car at the BMW Group.
Finally at CES, BMW has been working with vehicle system provider Valeo to develop a 'next-generation automated Level 4 parking solution.' This allows drivers to leave their car at a designated drop-off area, after which the car will park itself, and then recall to the drop-off to collect the driver when they're ready. The system has been designed for fully automated control, or to be used with a 'teleoperation' setup, where a trained operator takes control of the car and parks it remotely.
"BMW is synonymous with both the ultimate driving machine and the ultimate digital experience," said Frank Weber, Member of the Board of Management responsible for BMW Group Development. "At the CES we are showing more content, more customisation and more gaming. This is all underpinned by our powerful, in-house developed BMW Operating System. And we will take a look to the future, of course, with perfectly integrated augmented reality and strong, reliable artificial intelligence at the interaction between human and machine."