SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 24 - Alphabet's Google is

providing key capabilities for an artificial intelligence

assistant for Volkswagen drivers in a smartphone

app, part of Google's strategy to win business by offering

tools to build enterprise AI applications.

Consumers can ask Volkswagen's in-app assistant questions

like "How do I change a flat tire?" or point their phone cameras

at vehicle dashboards to receive relevant information.

The AI assistant draws on Google's Gemini large language

models, programs that can understand and generate predictive

responses to human language, and cloud computing capacity.

The VW tool was designed by adding data such as Volkswagen

owner's manuals and YouTube videos on vehicle maintenance to

Gemini.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told Reuters that the product

required overcoming technical hurdles to multimodality, the

ability to process different data types such as text, images and

videos.

"The problem looks superficially simple, but it's

technically very complex," Kurian said. "Most people think what

we built is a speech-to-text translation system that then looks

up a manual. Absolutely not."

The AI assistant is free and available to about 120,000

owners of Volkswagen's Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport models. It

will roll out by early next year to other cars from model year

2020 and later.

Corporate adoption of generative AI could alter the

lucrative cloud computing market, where Google places third in

terms of market share behind Amazon ( AMZN ) and Microsoft ( MSFT )

. Most companies are still searching for applications

that users will find practical.

Cloud computing is a growing business segment for Google,

accounting for $33 billion of the firm's $307 billion in overall

revenue in 2023.

AI solutions have driven billions in revenue this year, the

company has said, though it declined to disclose more precise

figures.

Volkswagen declined to give details about usage for its AI

assistant so far.