To many, the use of artificial intelligence still sounds like science fiction. At BMW Group, it has become a matter of course in many departments and is already being used in BMW vehicles.

BMW Group currently uses artificial intelligence in more than 400 applications and in every relevant area of the company. It plays a particularly important role in the development of new vehicles and technologies. It also forms the basis for automated driving and the most natural user experience possible in the car itself – natural interaction.

The prerequisite for any application of artificial intelligence is a comprehensive data base. In order to be able to virtually map traffic in the driving simulation centre and to train BMW Group vehicles on Automated Driving in the next step, the real road network and traffic events must first be digitalized. In October 2020, more than 250 million kilometres of "real world driving experience" are be available from the regions of Europe and North America. From the totality of data from these two sources, BMW Test Fleet and BMW Customer Vehicles, particularly relevant driving scenarios and environmental factors are selected and their relevance is continuously increased.  The BMW Group High Performance D3 platform handles the processing of this amount of data, with over 230 petabytes of storage capacity in the target expansion, as well as an extremely powerful compute platform with more than 100,000 processor cores and over 200 GPUs ( Graphics Processing Units).

Artificial intelligence, however, can already be used and experienced by drivers and passengers of BMW Group vehicles. Available in many models since the end of 2018, the Intelligent Personal Assistant uses AI and makes it easier for the customer to operate the vehicle. With the command "Hey BMW" the driver can activate the IPA and control many functions by voice command and without predetermined commands. "The key is AI and machine learning. They are essential in the area of natural interaction – i.e. the intuitive operation of the vehicle – and improve both the comfort and safety of the occupants," explains Simon Euringer, BMW Group, Head of Intelligent Personal Assistant.