Volkswagen releasing ChatGPT assistant to US vehicles

Not just tech companies and search engine giants, automakers are also going all-in for the AI Boom as Volkswagen is rolling out its much-awaited ChatGPT-powered voice assistant feature to all vehicles in the USA.

Image from Volkswagen

Named "Plus Speech" this new voice assistant will soon be available to Volkswagen owners in the United States it is simply an AI chatbot with the backend in the hands of car chatbot company Cerence’s Chat Pro product and also uses OpenAI's ChatGPT (a large language model) to make it much better in a vehicle.

This was first announced at CES 2024 for vehicles with IDA voice assistant without rolling out the feature in the US market.

However, the company now decided to give it a go for Americans too.

Valkswagen’s AI Voice Assistant will finally get a rollout starting from September 6 for 2024 ID.4, 2025 Jetta, and Jetta GLI models with an 82kWh battery pack.

All the latest models that will come in 2025 or names like that would get this new feature built-in and ready to use for free with a 3-year limit and then a $9 annual subscription will be required as VW official said:

ChatGPT functionality will be available in most MY25 Volkswagen vehicles, official press release.

The automaker is passionate about providing "hands-free experiences" with this new feature.

Briefly: Volkswagen is embracing AI for automobiles wholeheartedly. Instead of competing with OpenAI, they are partnering with the current AI-King to introduce its vehicle owners to what they are looking for.