BMW teams up with Alibaba to jointly develop automotive AI

The Chinese car market is large enough to justify deep adaptation of foreign models sold there. The field of software solutions for the automotive industry is no exception, so starting next year, BMW will begin offering Alibaba’s AI-enabled software solutions for cars sold in China.

Image source: BMW

To be more precise, as Bloomberg explains, the German carmaker will collaborate with the startup Banma, which is financed by the Chinese giant Alibaba and develops its software solutions using the large language model Qwen and the relevant specialists. Starting next year, BMW cars for the Chinese market will have an advanced voice assistant, they will also learn to understand the context of the car owner’s movements and offer related services. In addition, in conditions of dense city traffic, the driver will always have information about traffic jams in front of his eyes.

BMW is not alone in its preferences. Chinese automakers XPeng, Zeekr and Leapmotor are ready to use Alibaba’s Qwen language model in their on-board systems. Alibaba itself is ready to invest serious funds in the development of artificial intelligence technologies; $52 billion will be allocated for these needs in the next three years. This area of ​​activity will become a priority for the Chinese giant. In the smartphone segment, Alibaba managed to agree with Apple on the launch of information services localized for the Chinese market.