PARIS: Groupe PSA has called upon a Silicon Valley start-up to enable its future cars to converse naturally with their drivers.
It recently signed the deal with SoundHound, Inc, which is developing voice and AI integration technology to tailor the world's fastest speech recognition technology and seamless natural language understanding capability to Groupe PSA’s vehicles. Groupe PSA is the umbrella group that comprises the Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Vauxhall and Opel brands.
At present, the unique Deep Meaning Understanding technology developed by SoundHound Inc. is said to be the only service that, like a human being, can instantly answer multiple questions asked in a single sentence.
The digital personal assistant will be able to act on its own to perform a variety of tasks, such as finding a restaurant that meets several criteria (e.g. open on Sunday evening), activating vehicle functions and launching connected services. With a single voice command, drivers will be able to simultaneously regulate temperature, ventilation and the direction of air conditioning.
Groupe PSA said it hoped to roll out the best conversational experience on the market within two years. It said the easy-to-use voice assistant would simplify life on board for vehicle users and contribute to greater safety.
