Toyota has become the first customer of US firm Cerence’s new AI cloud platform in Japan. The Japanese car maker intends to use the platform’s speech recognition and natural language processing capabilities to boost its in-car voice assistant Agent service.

Toyota first began using Cerence services in 2014 for its voice recognition functions within Toyota’s Connected Services.

Agent is an interactive voice service that allows drivers to search and set destinations, check the weather, and search for other information.

The new cloud platform hosted directly in Japan will improve Toyota Agent’s response time in its home market. Toyota will be able to offer a smoother and more advanced driver experience to its connected service users in the future.

“As expectations for AI-powered automotive assistants continue to expand for Japanese drivers and around the world, we are committed to growing and enhancing our offerings to meet their needs,” said Shojiro Kimura, Regional Vice President, Japan, Cerence. “The installation of our new cloud service centre in Japan demonstrates our constant dedication to bringing a state-of-the-art experience to our Japanese OEM customers like Toyota Motor Corporation and their drivers.”