How Google’s Gemini AI Will Transform The Driving Experience

Google's launch of the new Pixel Pro Smartphones will be the beginning of bringing conversational AI into your car. Bigger changes are coming.

This month Google launched their new Pixel Smartphone line but much of the first part of the announcement was on Google’s Gemini AI which, when coupled with Android Auto, will provide the first Generative AI interface in a car and a precursor to what the coming Gemini enabled cars will be like and it’ll be a game changer as it will begin to turn your car from a thing you have to learn how to use, to something that learns how to best work with you. 

This is the promise of a conversational Generative AI platform like Gemini, you can talk to it as if it were a person and you don’t need to learn specific commands in order to get it to automatically do things for you. And, you can have conversations with it, just to kill time, or to explore ideas, concepts, even develop creative materials like stories you might want to publish later or share with your kids.

Voice Command To Conversational AI

Voice command technology goes back to the 1990s and it is painful to use unless you are willing to either listen to the prompts every time you use it or take the time to memorize them. Even then you are limited to the prompts in the system and can’t go off the script or the tool won’t work.

With conversational Generative AI you don’t need to learn anything other than to be succinct and complete in your commands and interactions. And, as the AI learns from you, you don’t even need to be as complete as you initially did. For instance, you might initially ask the AI to call your spouse using her name, but once the AI makes that connection you could just say call my spouse or, as part of a chained set of instructions, you can use pronouns rather than the name of the person to execute subsequent commands. For instance, you might say “set an appointment with Bill my dentist for 3:30 on Wednesday” then say call my dentist and the car will now know, based on the context of that prior request, that you mean Bill.

You can’t really have a conversation with the old command-based technology because it only understands the programmed commands, but with conversational Generative AI, you can just chat with it. I know when I’m on a long drive I like talking to people to stay alert and keep from falling asleep and will talk out loud to myself if no one is in the car. But with Gemini you can have a full conversation on any topic that Google has trained the AI on, and Google owns internet search giving it access to one of the most massive data training sets on the planet which should result in an interesting conversation on anything from motorcycle maintenance to how to build an android.

Once your car is connected to your Pixel smartphone (Pixel Android phones gain a dedicated TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) their version of an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) allowing Gemini to run locally reducing latency which is critical to having a conversation.

Gemini In Your Car – The Next Step

But while you can have conversations and ask Gemini questions once your car is connected to Android Auto, the real magic will happen when cars with Gemini built in show up. Then you’ll be able to give your car natural language instructions like “turn on 3D surround cameras” or “park in that space in front of me to the right” and the car will simply follow your instructions which, I’ll admit, will be really handy since I’ve never figured out how to use the auto-park feature in any of my advanced cars. 

In addition, rather than getting a warning light with little to no context or information, Gemini should be able to expand on the alert telling you whether the car should immediately be shut off (like when a timing chain breaks) or whether you can keep driving until you get to a repair shop as with most “check engine” light problems. In addition, the car should be able to walk you through any repairs that are needed or direct you to the closest dealer or mechanic that can address this problem, who has a good reputation.

Knowing your likes and dislikes the AI will also be able to suggest interesting places to eat, stop, and to point out interesting things along the road you might have otherwise missed. In short, Gemini will be very much like a co-pilot and, once integrated with autonomous driving, will behave more like a chauffeur in use in terms of keeping you safe, and alerting you to any potential problems before they become critical.

Wrapping Up:

Gemini, Google’s AI, is a major part of the new Google Pixel phone launch, but this technology will eventually find its way into car AV systems, and when it does, it will transform the car experience into something closer to having a dedicated and experienced chauffeur than anything you’ve so far seen from in-car automation and entertainment. Granted it will show up in electric cars first, but eventually every car will have an AI first to talk to and eventually to drive the car.

We are at the very front of what will be one of the fastest technological roll outs of all time and I doubt any of us are ready for it.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst covering automotive technology and battery developments at Torque News. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia, and follow his articles on Forbes, on X, and Linkedin.