First announced at last year’s AI and Autonomy Day, the Rivian Assistant is powered by the company’s Rivian Unified Intelligence, “a shared, multi-modal AI foundation” that is “interwoven” throughout the entire company. The assistant is deeply embedded in the vehicle’s operations, but will also pair with third-party apps like Google Calendar. Rivian has said that the assistant is designed in-house, but “augmented” by third-party models “for grounded data, natural conversation and powerful reasoning.”

I got to test an early version of the Rivian Assistant last year. While sometimes a little slow to respond to queries, I thought range and breadth of what the assistant could handle was pretty impressive. It can be activated via the scroll wheel on the steering wheel or by simply saying “Hey Rivian.” In a demo, the assistant was shown to be able to read upcoming events in Google Calendar and modify them, such as rescheduling a meeting.

Rivian provided a number of examples of ways owners can interact with the assistant, such as asking whether a river is shallow enough to cross, to show the camera view of their truck’s bed, or to combine travel distance with queries about the timing of the sunset. The assistant can also respond to casual, naturalistic statements. For example, saying you “need to get cleaned up on the way home” prompts the assistant to find a nearby car wash.

Rivian doesn’t allow popular phone projection systems like Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, preferring instead to design and build many of these features itself. Rivian argues that because of this, it can design an AI assistant that connects directly to the vehicle’s hardware, allowing owners to use their voice to control core functions like HVAC, drive mode selection, battery preconditioning, and more. To be sure, Rivian does run on Android Automotive’s operating system for its R1 vehicles, as well as its upcoming R2 and R3 vehicles.