BMW to Introduce A.I.-Powered Personal Assistant

BMW will offer a digital personal assistant in its vehicles starting in March that will carry on conversations with drivers in an intelligent way to control vehicle settings, navigation, and entertainment systems, the automaker has announced.

The Intelligent Personal Assistant, which will be powered by artificial intelligence technology, will be accessible from outside the vehicle through a smart speaker or smartphone. It will be compatible with other digital personal assistants. The character will be available with the phrase, "Hey BMW," and can carry on conversations as well as responding to voice commands.

It will be available on vehicles with the new BMW iDrive 7.0 as part of the Live Cockpit Professional feature.

The assistant will be available in a basic version in 23 languages in March in the U.S., Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Brazil, and Japan. In May of 2019, it will be available in China.