AI agents are coming to Rivian’s cars

Rivian has introduced an AI assistant that enables drivers and passengers to interact with their electric vehicles solely through voice commands. The founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, revealed during a recent TechCrunch Disrupt event that Rivian's future vehicles will support AI agents created by other companies like Anthropic. Scaringe emphasized that this development holds significant potential, noting that it becomes "magical."

Rivian's approach to integrating AI agents involves using an in-house agentic framework that interprets the user's intentions when they speak to the vehicle. The assistant can then route these actions to the appropriate part of the car's software. Typical tasks include adjusting temperature, activating seat warmers, or summarizing news updates. Rivian's agent is capable of accessing external applications, such as Google Calendar, with the aim of incorporating agents from frontier AI companies in the future.

However, the company must be cautious when dealing with vehicle-level controls, as these are not meant to be handled by the AI agents. Instead, Rivian aims to extend the functionality of existing agentic apps, allowing users to connect the vehicle to context collected by apps like Muse. For instance, a driver could instruct the assistant to adjust ventilated seats before discussing plans for a dinner party.

The car could then recall relevant information from previous conversations with the assistant, regardless of the device used. This strategy would enable Rivian to join the growing list of American car manufacturers incorporating AI agents into their vehicles' software, following Tesla's recent addition of support for SpaceX's Grok chatbot and Grok Bot assistant.