Is AI voice control in cars the next big thing... or a complete waste of time?

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has become a significant hoopla for carmakers to desparately plead that they are in no way a ‘legacy’ industry. The audience skews heavily tech, and this year AI voice interaction was hot hot hot.

In the show-floor demos, trained operators would ask their cars to change the climate settings, schedule a meeting after checking who’s available, and navigate to a destination based on inputs like ‘can you find me a good Italian restaurant?’

Seeing the oh-so-2026 label ‘AI’ added to voice control, we’re supposed to believe it possesses higher, human-adjacent powers compared with the voice control that’s been native to our cars for years, or indeed with Siri or Google Assistant.

They also claim these systems can hold several conversations simultaneously with different people in the car. Certainly that should overcome a massive fail with every in-car voice assistant I’ve ever used. I start talking, and at the same time one of my family also pipes up, and the whole interaction falls on its backside.

But this acknowledgement by AI developers that there are other occupants in the car shows they’re inventing a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Why would my passenger hold a verbal tête-à-tête with the dashboard about reviews for a restaurant? They’d look on their phone. The only moment they’d talk to the car is at the end of the process when they’d found nearby parking and want it in the satnav. But even then, they’d get probably get more luck tapping it into the touchscreen.

And if they wanted to turn on their seat heater? If they have to do it by voice, right there is a 24-carat demonstration that the car’s ergonomics are fundamentally crap. The control should be obvious on the screen.

But most of all, underlying all this is the laughable assumption that a connected car is actually, y’know, connected. Your phone call drops, your WhatsApp takes ages to arrive, your satnav loses traffic connection... the mobile networks rub your nose in it, reminding you that a monthly subscription doesn’t actually buy you reliable network coverage. And so any in-car feature designed around a strong, stable signal will inevitably fail and frustrate.

Also, am I the only one who hates talking to a bot? Humanity is for us humans, thanks.