Drivers of vehicles manufactured by BMW are about to get a pleasant surprise in the form a new artificial intelligence-enabled personal assistant.

Revealed at a conference in San Francisco Thursday, BMW’s “Intelligent Personal Assistant” is scheduled to roll out in March of next year to all BMW models with the new BMW Operating System 7.0.

Channeling AI devices manufactured by the likes of Google LLC and Amazon.com Inc., BMW’s personal assistant responds to the phrase “Hey BMW” initially. Unlike the others, the call word can be customized by users. That customization comes complete with the ability to name the AI assistant. A press release from BMW Group cites examples of “Charlie” and “Joy.”

“BMW’s Intelligent Personal Assistant learns routines and habits, and is subsequently able to apply them in the appropriate context,” BMW explained. “He helps the driver, learns their preferences and is familiar with their favored settings – e.g. for the seat heating or the places they drive to frequently using the navigation system (‘Take me home’).”

Naturally car-focused, the assistant uses AI natural language processing for obscure phraseology. BMW noted that someone saying “Hey BMW, I’m cold” prompts the assistant to turn up the temperature inside the car.

For those interested in how their vehicle works, the assistant can explain various functions such as “How does the High Beam Assistant work?” and “Is the oil level okay?” and help answer questions such as “What warning messages do I have?”

The feature will be available in BMW cars with support for 23 languages in March 2019 in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Brazil and Japan, with China to follow in May 2019. The first models to get the assistant include the BMW 3 Series, BMW X5, Z4 and 8 Series models.

Image: BMW