Generative AI applications such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Stable Diffusion, ChordAI and others have captured the imagination of people around the world. Their ability to write text, create interactive video, compose music has garnered headlines and persuaded consumers and households to experiment on their own.

The transformative potential of Gen AI spans various industries and sectors, McKinsey research has estimated that gen AI has the potential to add up to $4.4 trillion in economic value to the global economy while enhancing the impact of all AI by 15 to 40 percent. A diverse array of stakeholders are actively seeking to capitalize on business opportunities through early adoption of generative AI applications. Embrace the power of Gen AI and unlock new possibilities in the evolving landscape of technology and innovation.

The automotive industry has garnered significant attention from tech giants like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon, who are investing heavily in General AI. In recent years, notable accomplishments have been made. Furthermore, as generative AI continues to gain momentum, the auto industry is rapidly adopting AI across various crucial functions.

As per Mckinsey’s report, Gen AI adoption emerge to generate business value across functions, especially in four functions of marketing and sales, Software Engineering (for corporate IT & for product development),Customer Operations and Product R&D.

Driven by competitive pressures, automotive companies are compelled to adopt GenAI, ensuring relevance and innovation leadership, with early adopters poised for strategic advantages’ 

– MHP’s Senior Manager Mobility Transformation, Augustin Friedel.

Gen AI adoption in Automotive Product Development

Automotive industry players are looking to generative AI to help accelerate design iterations and provide better results.

The traditional car design process, from concept to production, can span several years. However, with the power of generative AI, this timeline can be drastically reduced to just a few months. By harnessing publicly available AI tools like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Runway, and Kaiber, designers can tap into their creative potential and generate innovative ideas. Moreover, by combining the creative capabilities of GEN AI with physical engineering parameters, the product development process can become even more efficient, streamlined, and cost-effective.

Toyota build automotive-oriented Gen AI design tool

Toyota Research Institute unveils new generative AI technique for vehicle design. With Toyota’s customized tool of diffusion modals for vehicle image generation, designers can add initial design sketches and engineering parameters into the product development process, cutting down the iterations needed to reconcile design and engineering considerations, accelerate the time to market.

BMW Transforms Future Models with Gen AI

Gen AI technology allows designers to create more innovative and personalized vehicle designs by entering desired parameters, such as size, weight, safety features, and aesthetic elements into an AI system. The AI then processes these inputs to generate multiple design variations, offering designers a broad spectrum of choices that still comply with safety and production standards.

BMW partners with Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing foundation models (FMs) from leading AI companies like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Stability AI, and Amazon via a single API, to build the generative AI applications.

Autonomous Driving Development in Mobility

Such research areas include the use of neural radiance field technology to turn recorded sensor data into fully interactive 3D simulations. These digital twin environments, as well as synthetic data generation, can be used to develop, test and validate AVs at incredible scale.

• Canada-based startup, Waabi just raised $200 million, Series B- led by Uber and Khosla Ventures, to launch the next-gen fully driverless trucks, Level 4 autonomy in 2025.The funding round includes participation from best-in-class strategic investors NVIDIA, Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Scania Invest and Ingka Investments. The Waabi Driver AI system, with capability of human-like reasoning, paired with “Waabi World,” an advanced simulator, both built upon Nvidia Drive Thor Platform, reduces the need for extensive on-road testing and allows for a safer solution that is scalable from day one.
• Mobileye Global Inc, founded in 1999, located Jerusalem, Israel, required by Intel Corp in 2017, IPO on 2022. Solutions of Advanced Driver-Assistant system(ADAS) and Autonomous Driving (AV) technology have enabled more than 50+ automakers and transportation operators to make robotaxis, ride-pooling, public transport, and goods delivery with safety and fully autonomous. Volkswagen, Schaeffler, Benteler Holon, Man and other automakers integrate the Mobileye technology into their autonomous driving system. Zoox, an independent subsidiary of Amazon, Zoox purpose-built robotaxis are built in the powerful Nvidia Drive Thor platform, as well as redundant backups, in-house proprietary software, can make quick decisions to continue to drive safely.

Other automakers, including Chinese EV makers GWM (Great Wall Motor), ZEEKR and Xiaomi also have adopted the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin platform to power their intelligent automated-driving systems.

Mercedes-Benz & Volkswagen provides In-Vehicle Gen AI Applications

Gen AI can also be utilized to develop AI-driven in-vehicle experiences, such as natural language processing (NLP) for voice assistants, gesture recognition for intuitive controls, and computer vision for driver monitoring systems. Automotive manufacturers can leverage the toolkit to create personalized and interactive interfaces that enhance user convenience and engagement inside the vehicle.

• Benz uses ChatGPT, an implementation of gen AI, to power voice assistants in a beta program available to more than 900,000 vehicles. integrating AI technology like ChatGPT into voice assistants could enhance user interactions and provide more natural and conversational experiences for drivers and passengers in Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
• Volkswagen partners with Cerence to deliver an automotive-grade ChatGPT integration to Volkswagen drivers. Cerence Chat Pro will enable drivers and passengers to engage the in-car assistant in fun and conversational chit-chat.

Hyundai uses Ansys for structural simulation solutions for body system analysia

Hyundai motor company named Ansys a preferred supplier of structural simulation solutions for body system analysis that will ultimately support improvements to the safety and comfort of tomorrow’s passengers. Ansys Mechanical, the leading finite element analysis tool, and Ansys SimAI, the intersection of generative AI and simulation technology make the product engineering more iteration and innovation.

IT Development with GEN AI Platforms

The advent of software-defined vehicles (SDVs) marks a profound transformation in the automotive industry, with a new focus on software and digital capabilities surpassing traditional performance metrics like horsepower and chassis design. By 2025, the code complexity of these vehicles is expected to reach unprecedented levels, with an estimated 650 million lines of code per vehicle. As software plays a critical role in powering essential functions like driving assistance, navigation, and in-car entertainment systems, generative AI is poised to play a vital role in generating optimized algorithms for vehicle control systems, thereby driving the development of more efficient, adaptive, and effective software solutions.

In recent deployments, automotive OEMs have predominantly opted for two approaches: integrating off-the-shelf solutions and developing customized solutions tailored to their specific needs.

• As reported by CIO, Honda’s AI development team will work closely with ServiceNow, which is also implementing generative AI, to create the most productive applications for Honda.
• Leveraging its industry-leading AI hardware and software solutions, Qualcomm is also demonstrating traditional and generative AI capabilities with the Snapdragon^® Digital Chassis^™ Platform, aiming to provide the automakers with scalable, flexible, future-proof ways to deploy and deliver connected and intelligent experiences that are safer, more personalized, and more immersive. deliver more powerful, efficient, private, safer, and personalized experiences for drivers and passenger.

Learn more insights on Intel’s Mobileye, Qualcomm and Nvidia automotive strategy from Creative Strategies.

Marketing and Sales Functions Transformed by Gen AI

London advertising giant WPP and NVIDIA are working on a groundbreaking generative AI-enabled content engine to assist the $700 billion digital advertising industry. In Omniverse, creative teams take advantage of OpenUSD to unify their complex 3D pipelines, seamlessly connecting design tools such as Adobe Substance 3D, Alias, and VRED to develop digital twins of client products. Accessing generative AI tools will enable content creation from trained datasets and built with NVIDIA Picasso, producing virtual sets. This will give WPP clients complete scenes to generate various ads, videos and 3D experiences.

At BYD, we are always looking for unique and innovative ways to reach our end consumer, and we believe the Metaverse is the next frontier for selling cars and engaging with the consumer.

said Stella Li, Executive Vice President of BYD Company Limited and CEO of BYD Americas

BYD, the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker, powered by MeetKai’s advanced AI and spatial computing technology, the BYD World platform seamlessly blends the digital and physical worlds, offering first-of-its-kind immersive brand experiences, from interact reception, customized configuration, to virtual test drive.

DENZA, BYD’s joint venture with Mercedes-Benz, is relying on WPP to build and deploy the first of its kind car configurators with Omniverse Cloud.

The omnichannel used-car retailer CarMax is increasing customer exploring efforts and enhancing the customer experience through its adoption of ChatGPT. CarMax has used Azure OpenAI Service to help summarize 100,000 customer reviews into short descriptions that highlight key takeaways for each make, model and year of vehicle in its inventory. It helps customers to get the proper search result and also rewards the website with higher SEO ranking and traffics to drive substantial business growth. The early and innovative adoption of GEN AI even makes the used-car retailer earned a coveted spot on the 2023 CIO 100 Award list.

“We would have had to have hired tens or maybe hundreds of content writers and taken years to generate this content,” says Mohammad. “We were able to do this literally in a matter of hours.”

“With the help of OpenAI Service, we’re disrupting our industry for a second time by delivering cutting-edge digital tools and capabilities and becoming a true omnichannel retailer. “

Shamim Mohammad: Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Technology Officer

Embracing the Future of Automotive: Empowering Employees with AI

As we drive towards a future where Gen AI transforms the automotive industry, it’s clear that the road to success lies not only in adopting cutting-edge technology but also in upskilling our most valuable resource: our employees. By providing access to AI technology learning resources and fostering a culture of continuous growth, we can empower our workforce to harness the full potential of Gen AI and stay ahead of the curve.

As the automotive industry continues to evolve, one thing is certain – the future belongs to those who are willing to adapt, learn, and innovate. By working together to bridge the AI skills gap, we can unlock new opportunities, drive innovation, and create a brighter future for all.

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