Rivian's AI Voice Assistant Coming in 2025

• Rivian's chief software officer confirmed text-to-speech messaging support will arrive next year.
• The goal is to make everything that's integrated into a vehicle's touchscreen available via voice commands.
• This tech could also appear in other Volkswagen Group vehicles as part of the joint venture with Rivian.

An AI-powered voice assistant will be arriving in the Rivian R1T and R1S sometime in 2025, the company confirmed. The announcement was made by chief software officer Wassym Bensaid during a Q&A session at Rivian’s showroom in Venice, California, last week.

Bensaid said his team was working on text-to-speech integration for text messaging two years ago but found the existing solutions were not up to company standards. He addressed the keyboard warriors who insisted their older, less technologically advanced cars supported text messaging but explained that was not the rich experience he wanted Rivian customers to have. Occasional missed texts, difficulty supporting group chats, and inconsistent emoji compatibility were not in line with what Bensaid believed the Rivian software experience should be.

“Please be patient with us,” Bensaid urged. “It’s not that we don’t want to have the feature; we will have it and it will be better than anything we have today in the industry.”

Bensaid explained that AI offers a tremendous opportunity. In addition to smoothing out the voice-to-text messaging experience, Bensaid wants everything that’s accessible through the vehicle’s central touchscreen to be available via voice commands. According to Bensaid, that will allow users to make multiple commands at once and for the system to interpret the overall intent of commands — why a customer wants something done.

“It will redefine how you interact with your car,” Bensaid said. His goal is to create a technology that will help users get over their established negative experiences with other voice assistants.

Rivian will not be the first automaker to experiment with this kind of tech. Mercedes-Benz announced last year it was pushing a beta program for MBUX to integrate ChatGPT to its “Hey, Mercedes” voice assistant, and vehicles with Android Auto or in-car Google integration can use Google Assistant, a predecessor to Google’s Gemini AI. We anticipate Gemini support will soon come to Android Auto.

Bensaid also confirmed that Rivian will soon offer native YouTube implementation and Google Cast support, which are on the way via an over-the-air update by the end of this year.