Automakers Leveraging ChatGPT for Car Sales Boost

0:00With all the different industries that ChatGPT and AI are currently disrupting, I think one of the very most interesting use cases I have heard to date is in car sales. So recently there's an article that came out on Axios that says AI and ChatGPT are selling cars in the metaverse. And instantly when I saw that, I was, you know, pretty intrigued. So on the podcast today, we're going to jump into what exactly is happening. Are people buying cars in the metaverse? Are these physical cars? And we'll get to the bottom of all of this. So I think the first thing to know is that, you know, car shopping is going to get a lot easier.

0:34People are going to start doing it from their own home based off of this new technology that's being displayed. and it's all thanks to VR and ChatGPT. So I think what is essentially happening is that Fiat and Kia are both trying to, I guess, be super forward thinking and revolutionizing the car buying experience. And they've both introduced metaverse dealerships. So both of the automakers are pretty much the first companies to identify a really practical business application for this. And it's interesting, essentially what's happening is the Fiat Metaverse store, which was unveiled in January at CES.

1:13Essentially, they developed it in collaboration with Microsoft and a software firm called TouchCast. But what's interesting is customers don't actually need a VR headset or any avatar or to be in VR to have this. It's all pretty much integrated into a Microsoft Teams, which again is interesting because I've used this in the past for a job I had, you know, I mean, this is like Slack. So it's just such an interesting place to be going and using this, in my opinion. In any case, essentially customers are able to interact virtually with a human or artificial, it's called a Fiat genius, who can answer any questions you would have about Fiat's cars in real time.

1:55And it's just, you know, powered by ChatGPT pretty much. So it's kind of like a customer service bot powered by ChatGPT, but it's like, looks like a real person. It's kind of like an avatar. So that's kind of interesting. And customers can pretty much check out a vehicle's, like all the features about it. They can ask the Fiat Genius questions and essentially, and like potentially they could even complete their purchase of buying the actual car from home in this kind of portal. So what's interesting is pretty much the common questions that people have about these cars are going to get pre-recorded and they'll have a pre-recorded video answer from a essentially a virtual product specialist that can answer your question.

2:35But for the more complex questions, those are referred to real humans who can pop into the quote unquote metaverse showroom and answer those. So it's kind of like, it's like a, it's like a glorified customer service bot in the metaverse or in 3D. I don't know. I don't know what we're calling the metaverse nowadays. is if you're doing this on Microsoft Teams, I feel like attaching metaverse just kind of trying to hype it up. So I think if they don't know the answer, ChatGPT is also going to help them find the right info. So it's like, it's pretty much like pre-recorded questions, and then they are able to answer it.

3:12If they don't know that, it goes to a person. And if the person doesn't know that, it goes to ChatGPT. So I mean, seems pretty funny to me. But anyways, essentially the experience is built to kind of mimic the way that a human salesperson would meet you at a dealership and you would ask them questions and then they'll say like oh let me show you and then they'll walk you over and open the door and kind of like show you around to the car so that's what they're trying to go off of and I understand for a lot of people this might be a great user experience for me personally I if I'm gonna buy a new car I would just watch a bunch YouTube videos about it and I would I'm the kind of person that would be happy to just go to the Tesla website and purchase my car and I guess if I have a friend that has the same one that would be cool but I'm less inclined to go to a dealership or want to talk to a person necessarily about all of the all of the specifications I would just go on YouTube but I know everyone's different and some people like to have that so this might actually be a very useful thing that could help you know if this was the experience you were looking for you wanted that dealership experience and you're and you didn't want to leave your home and you're like well fiat and kia do it and no one else does maybe it'll help you buy a fiat and kia fiat or a kia so pretty interesting um i think what's you know i think what's interesting is that these kind of interactions are inevitably going to be available um inside cars themselves so right now you're on microsoft teams uh you know and you're asking questions and stuff but what if you were like actually inside the car and rather than having to call the dealership that sold you a car and be like hey how do I open like the hatch or which side is like the gas on or I don't know I guess those are kind of dumb questions but you get the idea you know rather than looking through the manual I remember growing up like a light was out or something was dinging in our our new uh what was it Honda Odyssey my mom pulls out like the Honda Odyssey manual from the glove box and is flipping through it, trying to figure out why the car alarm is going off or what to do when certain things happen.

5:15So rather than having to do that, you're going to be eventually probably able to just access this quote unquote metaverse store from right inside the car, right? All the new cars have big screens on them. You're going to be able to jump on the metaverse store and get answers to all your questions about the car, which in my opinion, that is actually pretty useful. If you can get away from ever having to look through a manual, a car manual ever again, I'm all on board for any solutions to that. So something interesting, Kia Germany also unveiled their Metaverse store, which runs on Engage, which is a Metaverse platform for businesses.

5:47So customers can access that on a mobile device or a computer, but the best experiences on a VR headset. So that's kind of interesting because Kia is going a little bit more immersive, right? We see off Fiat who was just like, nah, just use like Microsoft Teams. Now Kia is like, nope, you're going to want a headset or I guess if you want, you know, some other sort of device, but, uh, essentially you're going to have for that version, you'll have like a digital avatar, and then you can walk through a virtual showroom and interact with the vehicle. And I mean, to be honest, that is kind of a useful use case of, um, of VR and like being able to walk around stuff.

6:21I mean, I know on computers, you kind of do the thing where you just like click around and like a 3d object. So they'll, they'll probably have that. Um, and yeah, you get all the questions to anything you want to know about the vehicle. And I guess the idea is just to make it a little bit more interactive. So, I mean, I think in reality, a lot of shoppers are likely just gonna wanna see the new car in person before committing to buy it. But, you know, we see people like Tesla who really have thrived off the model of exclusively having a website where you can look at it, see it, and buy it. So, I think it's gonna be pretty interesting to see exactly what happens in the industry.

6:57and if people start buying all their cars on the metaverse.