Nuance Communications, Inc. announced new Artificial Intelligence and Automotive Assistant capabilities for its Dragon Drive connected car framework to deliver advanced contextualized and personalized in-car experiences. Dragon Drive now features always-listening multi-passenger communication and AI-enabled text messaging, as well as additional feature for driver personalization. Dragon Drive already offers cognitive reasoning as part of its Automotive Assistant service, giving automakers the ability to deeply integrate an intelligent virtual personal assistant in the HMI cockpit that can listen, understand, reason and respond. Dragon Drive leverages contextual and situational data from the car and the driver to deliver an assistant that can proactively suggest navigation routes, points of interest, music and more. Nuance has expanded the capabilities of its Automotive Assistant, providing automakers with the ability to extend assistant capabilities to all passengers in the car – not simply the driver. With its Multi-passenger interaction solution, the in-car assistant can communicate with multiple people in the car leveraging Nuance’s wake-up word technology and identifying the passenger with voice biometrics. For example, the driver may engage the assistant to place a phone call while a passenger in the backseat can engage the system to play their 'Las Vegas road trip' playlist. Nuance also announced advanced AI-enabled text messaging, where the automotive assistant can understand the context of an incoming message and proactively suggest a response or take an action based on its contents. For example, if a driver receives the message at 1:30 p.m., 'Let’s meet at Michigan Central Station at 2:15', the Automotive Assistant will interpret the details and ask the driver if she would like to navigate to Michigan Central station given the time, as well as ask whether she would like to send back a message. The assistant will also provide options such as adding a meeting to a calendar. Nuance’s AI-enabled text messaging also inserts additional context and information into an outgoing message dictated through the system. For instance, the driver may say 'Tell Rebecca when I will arrive', and the assistant will send a message to Rebecca with a message stating 'I will arrive at 2:20 p.m'. The assistant knows based on the distance and navigation the expected arrival time, and understands which Rebecca to contact based on previous messaging exchanges or frequency of contact. Frequent contacts and their preferred contact details (mobile versus office or home) are learned by the Automotive Assistant over time. However, corrections are quick and easy with Dragon Drive’s voice barge-in technology that allows drivers to interrupt the assistant at any time. Nuance Dragon Drive also gives automakers the ability to easily update already deployed infotainment systems over the air with plug-ins that leverage the Nuance Mix NLU development platform. Automakers have access to an array of plug and play domains, such as sports, news, music and more that are conversational and intelligent, can be quickly and easily integrated in the head unit, accessible via the cloud or smartphone without impacting other apps and services in the infotainment system. Dragon Drive offers a level of user experience unmatched by aftermarket third party mobile phone solutions or solutions relying on cloud-based speech technology alone. Nuance’s unique hybrid voice capabilities provide drivers with a safer, smarter way to access apps and services, across more than 40 different languages.