Rivian announced on May 12 that its new AI-powered in-vehicle voice assistant is now available to all vehicles. This feature will be provided to Gen1 and Gen2 owners who have subscribed to the Connect Plus cellular service, at a monthly fee of $15.

The assistant, named Rivian Assistant, is based on the company's self-developed "Unified Intelligence" multimodal AI architecture, aiming to integrate AI capabilities into every aspect of vehicle operations.

Deep Vehicle Control: The assistant can directly answer questions about the vehicle itself and execute control commands. For example, drivers can request to view the cargo camera feed or ask whether the vehicle can cross a river of a specific depth.

Third-party Application Integration: Unlike traditional closed systems, Rivian Assistant can pair with third-party applications such as Google Calendar. In a demonstration, the assistant showed the ability to read and modify schedules, such as rescheduling meetings.

Multi-dimensional Reasoning: The assistant can handle complex compound queries, such as providing travel recommendations by combining current driving distance and sunset time.

Interaction and Technical Support

Users can manually activate the assistant using the scroll wheel on the steering wheel, or use the wake-up word "Hey Rivian" for voice interaction. Although the assistant was designed internally by Rivian, it also incorporates third-party models to "enhance" it, ensuring natural conversation, accurate data, and strong logical reasoning capabilities.

Although the response speed occasionally had delays during early testing, the breadth and depth of its transaction processing left a strong impression. With this official release, Rivian is trying to create a more intelligent "third living space" for owners through software-defined cars.