General Motors
- GM says it's keeping humans in its OnStar call centers to help with emergencies.
- It comes as OnStar is getting a fresh makeover, complete with AI.
- "The stakes are too high," an exec told BI about the human-in-the-loop.
GM is giving OnStar an AI overhaul. The automaker says it is not coming for the person who answers when your airbags deploy.
On Wednesday, during the company's tech conference, GM Forward, Ed Nightingale, GM's vice president of digital products, told Business Insider that the automaker would continue to use human OnStar staffers on emergency calls to contact first responders.
"That's something that isn't changing," Nightingale said. "We feel that, when it comes to a crash or a problem being solved, they want to make sure that there's a human in the loop. The stakes are too high."
The company declined to comment on how long those call-center humans will be a part of its OnStar plans.
Humans-in-the-loop are a notable constraint on GM's AI ambitions. Other AI-enabled companies, such as SpaceX, have recently highlighted how few customer calls are routed to humans.
It also comes as the company gives OnStar — its 30-year-old in-car emergency service — a much bigger job.
GM showed off OnStar AI on Wednesday. It's a new voice assistant designed to understand a vehicle and the driver using it. The automaker said it can answer questions about vehicle alerts, control some functions, plan routes around bad weather, and offer more context-aware suggestions, including from information through a driver's digital calendar.
The assistant subscription will arrive first on the 2027 Cadillac Lyriq via an over-the-air update in the coming months, GM said. Other vehicles will follow.
GM also plans to unify its brand-specific mobile apps under the OnStar AI name next summer.
Onstage, Sterling Anderson, GM's chief product officer, said the company was turning the 30-year-old service into "an intelligent platform."
The shift is part of a large bet from GM.
GM is focusing heavily on its tech capabilities. On recent earnings calls, CEO Mary Barra has highlighted GM's subscription products. Anderson previously told Business Insider about how AI has allowed the company to cut product development time in half, starting with the GMC Hummer EV, which only took 20 months of development. Industry-average product development is typically around 5 years.
On Wednesday, the company also highlighted the development of its hands-off, eyes-off self-driving features, set to make their debut in the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028.
GM still has to persuade drivers that the new tools are valuable enough to use — and, in some cases, pay for.
Nightingale said subscriptions only retain customers when drivers can see the benefit.
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