GM Studying Voice Assistant Feature

General Motors is looking into the prospect of a voice assistant à la Alexa or Siri in future models, the Detroit Free Press reported, citing an interview with CEO Mary Barra by a Fox Business anchor.

Barra said an artificial-intelligence-operated assistant would “make your car better as you own it.”

A GM spokesman told the publication that the Detroit-based automaker has no specific plans to introduce such a feature but said its software engineers are studying the concept.

“It’s one of many things we can put on the vehicle,” Barra said in the TV interview. “The vehicle really is a software platform and starting in 2019, General Motors started rolling out vehicles where you could do over-the-air updates for almost every module in the vehicle.”

“Infotainment” features, such as voice assistants, have been among the vehicle features consumers have made the most complaints about. J.D. Power’s recent annual U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study found they remained the biggest problem area among studied models, with an average of about 50 problems per 100 vehicles, nearly twice as many as the next most problematic category of exterior.

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Originally posted on Auto Dealer Today