Qualcomm's Chief Marketing Officer Don McGuire and I are sitting inside a giant AI machine -- the electric, sensor-packed 2025 Mercedes GLC. He's telling me that cars will become "digital living spaces," and I can see what he means. If I had to pick one car to live in, it would definitely be this one.
The car is a showcase of Mercedes' partnership with Qualcomm, which has contributed its Snapdragon Digital Chassis platform to the car in order to create an immersive cockpit capable of AI-driven voice interactions. We sit back in our luxurious leather seats and watch a brief recap of McGuire speaking on stage at the company's Snapdragon Summit via YouTube on the GLC's giant infotainment screen. "Yes -- I could quite happily hang out in here all day," I think.
While we enjoy this digital living space on wheels stationed outside of the Summit conference halls on Maui, McGuire explains to me how the car -- just like our phones, and just like the smart glasses and watches and rings we're increasingly wearing -- is set to become part of a personal ecosystem of ambient AI.
As the company that makes the chips that go inside everything from the top Android phones, to laptops, to wearables and yes, cars, Qualcomm is thinking several years down the line when it comes to AI. It's been at the forefront of enabling AI agents that can process complex tasks, taking the initiative to suggest, predict and accomplish tasks on our behalf. Putting these agents inside cars, the thinking goes, would lift the burden on us, turning them into interactive havens of productivity, fun and relaxation.
"We can't think of a more hands-free, natural-language, voice-interactive, agentic experience than a vehicle," McGuire says.
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Whether you're driving, sitting in traffic, waiting for school pickup or just having a moment of downtime in your car, the combination of multiple screens, cameras and microphones means you can interact both with things inside and outside of the car, he adds.
You could request that an AI agent rearrange your schedule based on traffic predictions or ask it questions about a restaurant you see and allow it to book you a spot for your next date night if the reviews are good, for example.
When your AI car becomes your AI glasses
I'm interested to understand how exactly the car will seamlessly fit into the burgeoning ecosystem of AI-enabled devices. I ask McGuire how he envisions the car that we're in will interact with another AI-driven piece of tech, such as the Oakley Meta smart glasses he's sporting.
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