Hyundai Motor Group says it will release a purpose-built Large Language Model (LLM) that will be part of a new infotainment operating system and AI voice assistant in its upcoming passenger cars.
Chang-Hyeon Song, president and head of the New Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS) division within Hyundai Motor Group, said Ny Breaking in an exclusive interview that his division had already partnered with Naver, which Song refers to as “the Google of South Korea,” to collaborate on building out its current LLM model for use in future Hyundai models.
“The problem with today’s LLMs is that they don’t have access to vehicle data,” Song told us during a discussion at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
“These models don’t have access to phone contacts, they don’t have access to vehicle settings and driver data, which means current models can’t give users all the answers,” he says.
This year’s CES 2024 was peppered with announcements from the Large Learning Model and press releases outlining upcoming AI assistants in vehicles. Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz were perhaps the most vocal, with the former announcing that it, along with fellow Volkswagen Group brand Skoda, would be introducing ChatGPT to its vehicles.
However, VW made it very clear that ChatGPT would not have access to vehicle information; instead, the IDA voice assistant would handle vehicle requests.
Song said he wanted to create a “hybrid” system that would send general questions to Naver and other such AI chatbot providers for answers, but also use Mapbox’s MapGPT location-intelligent AI voice assistant for conversational navigation requests and Hyundai’s in-house developed voice assistant for vehicle functionality. The idea is that everything works in harmony in theory.
Song didn’t reveal any details, but a recent announcement from Mapbox states that the pair are already working on a solution that will allow “drivers to use voice commands to control in-car systems including climate control, windows and music,” such as and integrate popular third-party apps as Open Table And TripAdvisor in the upcoming navigation system, which Song says will arrive with a new infotainment platform in 2026.
“I like CarPlay, but right now we can’t give that system access to vehicle data,” Song told us. “I want our upcoming infotainment system to be as CarPlay-like as possible, taking care of everything in one ecosystem and one voice assistant,” he added.
A former Apple and Microsoft employee, Song is also the founder of Naver Labs, the R&D unit of South Korea’s largest web search engine and global IT brand Naver, which goes some way to explaining his decision to leverage Naver’s existing research into LLMs.
Software everywhere
In addition to infotainment upgrades, Song’s talent in the technology industry (he is CEO of autonomous transportation-as-a-service startup 42dot) has been called upon to drive the company’s “Software-Defined Everything” (SDx) strategy the Hyundai Motor Group, which aims to transform “all moving devices, fleets and ecosystems into valuable assets through advanced software and AI,” according to the brand.
This will have a huge impact on Hyundai’s next big step, which will take the company beyond today’s private vehicles and towards a fully autonomous future.
“The focus of the next two years is to introduce a new infotainment system platform with integrated AI assistant and provide an app marketplace to customers,” Song explains, bringing the conversation back to the present.
“To do this we open up our API to third party developers and say ‘here is our data, try to improve what we have and take advantage of what we have built’ so we can develop a great app that uses the vehicle data to offer more to the user. I think that’s what sets us apart from a lot of other OEMs, the fact that we’re open,” he adds.
When asked if Hyundai is the first to do something like this, Song mentions Mercedes-Benz and the work the German auto giant is doing on its own MB.OS platform, a platform that also promises to connect vehicles to the cloud and IoT. There was also no word on what the ‘killer app’ would be.
“Initially the market will offer services such as User Based Insurance, which uses the vehicle data capabilities I mentioned, but we don’t want to offer too many features too quickly. We want the initial features to be tightly integrated with the vehicle,” adds Song to.