Cerence, a developer of AI-based voice assistant technology for automobiles, has expanded its partnership with automaker Renault to enhance “Reno,” Renault's in-car companion avatar, with GenAI capabilities.

The partnership integrates Cerence Chat Pro, an automotive-grade LLM, into Reno, enabling conversational interactions and responses powered by ChatGPT. The system includes neural text-to-speech capabilities allowing Reno to convey different emotions and proactively suggest driving performance improvements.

Reno was initially launched in Renault 5 E-Tech electric in September 2024 and will be available in Renault 4 E-Tech electric in 2025. The system uses car data and sensors to provide information about vehicle features and functions while delivering accurate information from Renault sources through Cerence Car Knowledge.

Analyst QuickTake: The automotive industry has witnessed an increasing discourse surrounding the possibilities of incorporating GenAI technologies. Cerence has partnered with companies like Volkswagen, Audi , Smart , and Škoda to incorporate GenAI-based voice assistant features in their respective vehicles. Furthermore, Continental and General Motors (GM) partnered with Google Cloud in September and August 2023 , respectively, to bring GenAI technologies to the automotive industry. GM also announced that it was exploring using ChatGPT (in partnership with Microsoft, an investor in OpenAI) in March 2023 to improve vehicle user experience. Mercedes-Benz partnered with Microsoft in June 2023 to test in-car ChatGPT AI on vehicles.