The Verge writing about VW’s in-car AI:

Volkswagen says that OpenAI’s chatbot along with a “multitude” of other models are provided by automotive chatbot company Cerence, which will take over for IDA when requests are more complex than tweaking your air conditioning settings. For instance, the company says when drivers ask for things like restaurant recommendations or for the chatbot to tell you a story, that will go to the cloud.

I’ve long wanted something like this for road trips. I want to be able to ask it about nearby historical markers, towns, mountains, etc.

@manton They lost me when they went to water cooling.

@manton It could be a cool feature but I'd rather that be enabled by my phone and have my car just remain a dumb device.

@JoeCotellese Me too. I'm not very confident that Siri will get this soon, though, or allow third-party apps to extend it in this way. Ideally it would be universal, not just in the car.

@manton Anything VW says about software should be taken with a pinch of salt. We had to disable ID or IDA pretty quickly. I think of it as Siri having a bad day.