Mercedes-Benz and Google have developed AI-powered conversational search from within car navigation systems.

The partnership will enable drivers to have natural-language conversations with the MBux virtual assistant to get information from Google Maps about nearby points of interest and more.

The MBux virtual assistant is powered by Google Cloud’s automotive AI agent (cloud.google.com/solutions/vertical-ai-agents). Built using Gemini on Vertex AI, the agent is tuned for the automotive industry and can reference information from Google Maps to give users more detailed and personalised conversational responses about navigation, points of interest and more.

Google Maps provides Mercedes-Benz owners with fresh and factual information about 250 million places around the world, and the map is updated nearly in real time, with over 100 million updates made to the map each day.

With the enhanced search and navigation experience, users can converse naturally with the assistant and get answers to questions such as: “Could you guide me to the nearest fine-dining restaurant for a unique culinary experience?”. Users can also ask follow up questions, such as: “Does the restaurant have good reviews?” or “What is the chef’s signature dish?” and the assistant can respond with accurate, up-to-date information and display navigation details through the vehicle’s native interface. The experience will be available in the MBux Virtual Assistant with Mercedes-Benz’s CLA series later this year.

The automotive AI agent will also let the virtual assistant handle complex, multi-turn dialogue and can retain memory of conversations, which means users can continue conversations and reference information throughout their drives.

“At Mercedes-Benz, we seek to offer our customers an exceptional digital experience,” said Ola Källenius, CEO of Mercedes-Benz (www.mercedes-benz.com). “Our partnership with Google Cloud will further enhance in-car navigation, combining sophisticated location data with generative AI. Launching with the new CLA, our next-gen navigation will allow drivers and passengers to use voice commands to obtain comprehensive and personalised information within seconds.”

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, added: “Mercedes-Benz is known for providing an amazing driving experience, and our partnership will bring cutting-edge AI breakthroughs to make those experiences even better. Our new automotive AI agent will help drivers navigate and search with in-vehicle assistants, so those interactions are more natural and helpful. This is just the beginning of how agentic capabilities can transform the automotive industry and I’m excited to see our partnership drive progress forward.”

The agent lets automakers leverage the power of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to build and deploy customised, first-party, voice assistant experiences with AI quality. It was built using Google’s Gemini models, which enables multimodal reasoning capabilities through natural language speech interactions and uses information from Google Maps.

The AI-enhanced points-of-interest search and navigation feature is coming to the Mercedes-Benz CLA later this year. It will be the first vehicle designed with the Mercedes-Benz MB.OS operating system. A rollout to further models with the MBux voice assistant is also planned.