Tesla: Elon Musk promising KITT-style AI assistant
We're guessing the system won't include oil slicks or a grappling hook, though.
A tweet from Elon Musk has suggested a KITT-style voice assistant could appear in future Teslas, supplementing the in-dash (or on-dash, in the case of the Model 3) touchscreens.
Asked by a Model 3 Performance owner whether his car will get "K.I.T.T like AI... any time soon?", Musk replied with a simple "Yes". This isn't the first time he's promised a smart voice assistant for Tesla, having previously claimed the AI-based control system will be able to do "pretty much anything via voice command".
Should the feature manifest, Tesla wouldn't be alone in offering a smart voice control system. The new Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX) system debuted in the A-Class offers 'Hey Mercedes' capability, allowing drivers to control most of the interior – from the temperature to the music – by speaking.
The system will "quickly proliferate" through the wider Mercedes-Benz range, to the point where you can speak to essentially any Mercedes like it's a Google Home or Amazon Alexa.
This isn't the first time Elon Musk has taken to Twitter for a product announcement. In June, he promised 'full self-driving features' by August, but didn't actually clarify which features that would entail.
As for KITT? That's a reference to the supercomputer-powered, sassy voice assistant in the Pontiac Trans Am from Knight Rider. Voiced by William Daniels (originally), the system could think for itself and effectively communicate with humans.
It could also run movies, music and games on the dashboard, although the latter will have to wait for full autonomy in the real world. Although the television Trans Am also had oil jets, a grappling hook and a smoke screen, among other crime-fighting features.
We'll have to wait and see what the Tesla interpretation looks like, but we're banking on something similar to 'Hey Mercedes' – minus the oil jets, naturally.
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