Column: A deep dive into how AI is changing the auto industry

When ChatGPT burst on the scene last spring, one of the editors at Automotive News asked it about himself. It described his career, listed several newspapers that had published his work and said he had died six years earlier. (To be clear, he hadn’t.)

So my first impression of the technology was that it was fast, powerful and dumb — dangerously dumb, for journalistic purposes.

And potentially perilous for the auto industry, as well. Remember when a chatbot agreed to sell a Chevy Tahoe for a dollar?

Since those days, we’ve all learned a lot more about generative artificial intelligence, as well as its predecessors, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

And it continues to pervade the automotive industry.

So I challenged the team at Automotive News to explore how AI is being used throughout the auto industry today. They found so many applications — and we’ve just scratched the surface.

• Tesla pictures itself turning into an AI-based company that makes self-driving cars and robots that can operate factories or take care of humans at home.
• General Motors is using an AI tool to help it test software and reports that it’s catching 10 times as many problems and finding them earlier.
• IBM’s Maximo can recognize when a part is still being produced within the prescribed specifications but trending near the edges. Armed with that insight, a plant manager can schedule a mold replacement for a weekend or overnight shift, before a costly emergency work stoppage is needed.

This past week online and in this issue’s printed pages, we’ve been focused on how AI is used in manufacturing and in vehicles.

In the second week, we’ll turn our attention to AI in the retail space.