General Motors will add a conversational AI assistant powered by Google Gemini to its cars, trucks, and SUVs starting next year, the U.S. automaker said Wednesday during an event in New York City. 

The Google Gemini rollout is one of several tech-centric announcements made at the automaker’s GM Forward event, and it will be one of the first to get into consumers’ hands. Others, including an overhaul of its electrical architecture and computing platform and an automated driving feature that allows drivers to keep their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road, aren’t coming to GM brands until 2028.

GM is the latest automaker to lean into generative AI-based assistants that promise to respond to driver requests in a more natural-sounding way. Stellantis is collaborating with French AI firm Mistral, Mercedes is integrating ChatGPT, and Tesla has brought xAI’s Grok to its vehicles.  

GM’s integration with Gemini is the next logical step for the automaker. Vehicles produced by GM brands Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC already have “Google built-in,” an operating system that gives drivers access to Google Assistant, Google Maps, and other apps directly from the car’s infotainment screen. In 2023, Google began using Google Cloud’s Dialogflow chatbot to handle non-emergency OnStar features, including common driver queries like routing and navigation assistance. 

GM’s Gemini-powered AI assistant will have similar levels of capability — it’ll just perform better, according to Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services.

“One of the challenges with current voice assistants is that, if you’ve used the, you’ve probably also been frustrated by them because they’re trained on certain code words or they don’t understand accents very well or if you don’t say it quite right, you don’t get the right response,” Richardson told TechCrunch. “What’s great about large language models is they don’t seem to be affected by that. They have context about previous conversations that they can bring up. They’re flexible in how you speak to them…so overall you’re getting a better, more natural experience.”

That might make drafting and sending messages, planning routes with additional stops (like a charging station or a favorite coffee shop), or even prepping for a meeting on the go, a more pain-free experience. The assistant will also have access to the web to be able to answer certain questions, like “What’s the history of this bridge I’m driving over?”

The Gemini assistant will be made available to via the Play Store as an over-the-air upgrade to OnStar-equipped vehicles, model year 2015 and above.

GM’s new voice assistant is a step towards the automaker’s goal of developing its own custom-built AI that connects to your vehicle’s systems through OnStar, GM’s in-car concierge. The way GM executives described the technology at the NYC event, it seems like a mix of a health wearable and an AI pendant, but for your car.

The assistant promises to access vehicle data to provide maintenance alerts and route suggestions, explain car features like one-pedal driving, and turn your heat or air conditioning on before you enter the vehicle.

“The idea here is you take [an existing] large language model, and you train it and refine it on a specific domain,” Richardson said. “We’ll take a base model and train it on the vehicle’s specifications, distill that down, and have that running on the vehicle.”

While GM has a close relationship with Google and will already be implementing Gemini into certain vehicles, Richardson said GM plans to test several foundational models from other AI firms, which could include OpenAI, Anthropic, and others.

Richardson said drivers will be able to control what information the assistant can access and use, and it can learn from your habits to offer personalized recommendations. GM’s emphasis on user controls is notable given the company’s recent controversy over selling customer driving and geolocation data to insurance brokers. 

Richardson said any data GM gets from drivers goes directly towards improving the product and won’t be sold to bring in additional revenue for the automaker. Over the last nearly two years, GM has brought on a new data team — including Christina Montgomery, who spent 30 years as IBM’s chief privacy and trust officer — to put standard processes and data governance technology in place.

“Everything that we’re going to do is going to be driven by customer consent, so you can always opt in or opt out,” he said. “Our viewpoint is that data and privacy has to be built into everything that we do.”

This article has been updated with comments from Dave Richardson.