Mercedes-Benz’s MBUX Virtual Assistant will use Google Gemini on the cloud. | Image: Mercedes-Benz / Google
Google Cloud’s new Automotive AI Agent platform promises to “continue conversations and reference information” throughout users’ drives, and the first car announced with it is the new Mercedes CLA. That car has the next-generation MB.OS operating system with an upgraded MBUX Virtual Assistant.
When Mercedes revealed it at CES in 2024, it didn’t say which company’s LLM it was running on. Meanwhile, the existing MBUX Voice Assistant system that could handle about 20 commands triggered with “Hey Mercedes” now includes results provided by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing, but it’s not a conversational platform. According to Mercedes, there’s a plan to roll out this upgraded system to “further models” that run the older Voice Assistant, but it didn’t specify which ones.
The new MBUX Virtual Assistant will feature four “personality traits,” including natural, predictive, personal, and empathetic. It can also ask you questions for additional clarity to get you what you need.
Google’s new AI Agent is tailor-made to automotive uses, leveraging Google Maps data to find points of interest, look up restaurant reviews for you, give you recommendations, answer follow-up questions, and more. Google says MBUX Virtual Assistant users will get access to “nearly real time” Google Maps updates. It also says it can “handle complex, multi-turn dialog.”
The agent uses Gemini and runs on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI development platform, designed to help companies build out AI experiences. “This is just the beginning of how agentic capabilities can transform the automotive industry,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated in a press release.
