GM is bringing Google Gemini-powered AI assistant to cars in 2026 

General Motors will add a conversational AI assistant powered by Google Gemini to its cars, trucks and SUVs starting next year, the U.S. automaker said Wednesday at an event in New York City.

The Google Gemini rollout is one of several tech-focused announcements made at the automaker’s GM Forward event, and it will be one of the first to reach consumers’ hands. Others, including an overhaul of the electrical architecture and computing platform and an automatic driving feature that lets drivers take their hands off the wheel and their eyes off the road, won’t come to GM brands until 2028.

GM is the latest automaker to use generative AI-based assistants that promise to respond to driver requests in a more natural-sounding way. Stellantis has partnered with French AI company Mistral, Mercedes is integrating ChatGPT, and Tesla has brought xAI’s Grok to its vehicles.

GM’s integration with Gemini is the next logical step for the automaker. Vehicles produced by GM brands Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC already have “Google built-in,” an operating system that gives drivers access to Google Assistant, Google Maps and other apps directly from the car’s infotainment screen. In 2023, Google began using Google Cloud’s Dialogflow chatbot to handle non-emergency OnStar functions, including common driver questions like routing and navigation assistance.

GM’s Gemini-powered AI assistant will have similar capabilities — it will just perform better, said Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services.

“One of the challenges with today’s voice assistants is that if you’ve used the voice assistants, you’ve probably also been frustrated by them because they’re trained in certain code words or they don’t understand accents very well or if you don’t say it quite right you don’t get the right answer,” Richardson told TechCrunch. “The great thing about large language models is that they don’t seem to suffer from that. They have context about previous conversations that they can bring to the table. They’re flexible in the way you talk to them… so overall you get a better, more natural experience.”

That can make composing and sending messages, planning routes with additional stops (like a charging station or a favorite coffee shop), or even preparing for a meeting on the road a more painless experience. The assistant also has access to the Internet to answer certain questions, such as “What is the history of this bridge I am driving over?”

The Gemini Assistant will be made available through the Play Store as an over-the-air upgrade for OnStar-equipped vehicles, model year 2015 and later.

GM’s new voice assistant is a step toward the automaker’s goal of developing its own custom AI that connects to your vehicle’s systems through OnStar, GM’s in-car concierge. As GM executives described the technology at the New York event, it seems like a mix of a health wearable and an AI pendant, but for your car.

The assistant promises to access vehicle data to provide maintenance alerts and route suggestions, explain car functions such as one-pedal driving, and turn on your heat or air conditioning before you get into the vehicle.

“The idea here is that you take [an existing] large language model, and you train and refine it on a specific domain,” Richardson said. “We take a base model and train it based on the vehicle specifications, distill that down and run that on the vehicle.”

Although GM has a close relationship with Google and will already deploy Gemini in certain vehicles, Richardson said GM plans to test several foundational models from other AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic and others.

Richardson said drivers can control what information the assistant can access and use, and it can learn from your habits to make personalized recommendations. GM’s emphasis on user controls is notable given the company’s recent controversy over selling customer driving and geolocation data to insurance brokers.

Richardson said any data GM receives from drivers will go directly to improving the product and will not be sold to bring in additional revenue for the automaker. Over the past nearly two years, GM has appointed a new data team — including Christina Montgomery, who served as IBM’s chief privacy and trust officer for 30 years — to build standard processes and data management technology.

“Everything we’re going to do is determined by the customer’s consent, so you can always opt in or out,” he said. “Our position is that data and privacy should be built into everything we do.”

This article has been updated with comments from Dave Richardson.