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The trend of cock-a-hoop touch screen in motorcar has get out many hungriness for the not - so - remote days when most user interactions happened with physical buttons . But Rivian ’s chief package officer Wassym Bensaid believes using buttons in a car is an “ anomaly . ”
“ It ’s a bug . It ’s not a feature film , ” Bensaid said Wednesday atTechCrunch Disrupt 2024 . “ Ideally , you would desire to interact with your machine through voice . The trouble today is that most voice assistants are just broken . ”
To that ending , Bensaid said that “ every week ” he ’s take around an engineering vehicle that has an AI - powered voice assistant , though he did not specify which one . He remark earlier in his interview with TechCrunch ’s fare editor Kirsten Korosec that Rivian has “ partnership that I can not yet talk about . ”
“ I think the car is actually a antic surround for AI , ” he said , while noting that latency and hallucination are still very big problems that need to be work .
“ The terminal north star I have is take voice [ controls ] become the primary way of interaction with the fomite . The realism is that the vehicle is so feature - rich , that even if we do a fantastic job in the UI , there will always be prioritization that we need to do in terms of consume things one or two menus behind , ” Bensaid told TechCrunch after he get off stage .
Bensaid also sound out he ’s a openhanded believer in the power of AI - power vox control to handle complex requests . For representative , he say if a driver enjoin “ I ’m hungry ” the in - gondola helper should be able to quickly channelize them to a nearby eating house that they might prefer .
This is not a dramatically novel idea ; Automakers like Mercedes - Benz have spent old age promising a seamless voice - see to it in - car experience , with motley final result . But Bensaid say Rivian ’s end is to make it possible to take every touchscreen control and make it available by voice .
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Before any of that happen , Bensaid pronounce he remains focused on delivering a custom experience to Rivian owners — intend CarPlay is not evince up anytime shortly . While he allege the squad inside Rivian “ continue[s ] to moot that , ” he said on stage that he trust leverage CarPlay is “ indolence ” and that he prefers to integrate specific apps , like Apple Music .
CarPlay “ take over all the pixels in the screen , and it ’s a replacement of the entire experience , and we truly trust that with the technology capabilities that we have , we can offer a much more tasteful , integrated experience , ” he say .
