By Mauro Orru


Volkswagen established a new business unit focusing on artificial intelligence to identify product ideas and collaborate with technology giants to bring them to life, raising the stakes in the battle to integrate the technology into passenger vehicles.

The German car maker said Wednesday that it is already in exploratory talks with some undisclosed international tech companies on its first AI products and features, and that its new company, AI Lab, would help to streamline collaboration with the tech sector in Europe, China and North America to harness the technology.

"We want to offer our customers genuine added value with artificial intelligence," said Volkswagen Chief Executive Oliver Blume. "Collaboration with technology companies is crucially important for us. In future, we intend to simplify cooperation in organizational and cultural terms."

The group said the aim is to develop digital prototypes and transfer them to its brands for implementation as it sees considerable potential in speech recognition and other services, such as AI-optimized charging cycles for electric vehicles, predictive maintenance and even connecting vehicles with infrastructure like drivers' own homes.

The move comes as a growing list of car makers seek ways to integrate AI into their products, from production to the end-user experience. Last year, Mercedes-Benz Group said it was testing OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot to help employees with the analysis of production data and quality management. BMW is also using AI to optimize its production processes.

On Tuesday, Stellantis's Peugeot brand laid out plans to integrate ChatGPT across its latest generation of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles as a voice assistant. Volkswagen itself is also working to integrate ChatGPT into its voice assistant, hoping to offer the feature from the second quarter of the year.

"We will pursue highly promising initiatives in the marketplace, together with partners where this is necessary, irrespective of existing arrangements and other links in series production," said Michael Steiner, head of research and development at Volkswagen.


Write to Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

01-31-24 0747ET