Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft The companies announced Thursday that they are working together to test ChatGPT’s in-car artificial intelligence, which is available in more than 900,000 vehicles in the US.

The luxury automaker said the emerging technology will be used for audio requests via the Hey Mercedes voice assistant, which is expected to greatly expand the system’s capabilities. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, this is the first implementation of ChatGPT in a vehicle.

Mercedes said an optional beta program for U.S. customers will begin on Friday. Customers can sign up via the company’s app called Mercedes me or directly from the vehicle using the voice command “Hello Mercedes, I want to join the beta program”.

“While most voice assistants are limited to predefined tasks and responses, ChatGPT uses an extensive language model to significantly improve natural language understanding and expand the topics it can respond to,” says the automaker. he said in the message.

Similar to other industries, potential applications of ChatGPT have emerged as a growing debate in the automotive industry. While some, such as General Motorssay their autonomous vehicles already use advanced artificial intelligence, or machine learning, the Mercedes partnership represents one of the first concrete use cases for ChatGPT.

GM said earlier this year it was an exploration use cases of ChatGPT in its vehicles as part of a broader collaboration with Microsoft, the investor in OpenAI that created the technology.

Eric Boyd, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s AI platform, said the new integration will boost voice commands and interaction, task capabilities and enable follow-up questions, among other things.

“Unlike standard voice assistants that often require specific commands, ChatGPT excels at handling follow-up questions and maintaining contextual understanding. Drivers can ask complex questions or engage in multi-turn conversations and receive detailed and relevant answers from the voice assistant,” Boyd he wrote in a blog post.

Based on the findings of the three-month beta program and customer feedback, Mercedes will consider further integration of the technology, according to the companies.