Mercedes gives its cars an AI upgrade

illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day, reviewed by our editorial team. Read the full piece on The Wall Street Journal or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: Mercedes-Benz is bringing conversational AI directly into its vehicles through a partnership with MIT spinout Liquid AI
• The automaker began rolling out the technology in selected North American models in October 2026, allowing drivers to control functions such as navigation, heating, seating and entertainment through more natural conversations without relying entirely on cloud computing

🔭 The context: Liquid AI's models are designed to run locally on vehicle hardware, potentially improving response times, privacy and functionality in areas with limited connectivity
• More complex requests, such as restaurant recommendations, will still be handled by larger cloud-based models
• Mercedes plans a broader rollout across its fleet in 2027, as it also seeks greater efficiency amid challenging market conditions and rising costs

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: On-device AI could reduce the need to transmit every request to remote data centres, potentially limiting some network and cloud-processing demands
• However, the article provides no figures on energy savings or the environmental footprint of the technology
• The wider sustainability impact would depend on hardware efficiency, electricity sources and the scale of deployment

⏭️ What’s next: Mercedes plans to extend the technology to additional models, including the 2027 S-Class, GLC Electric and GLE, from the second quarter of 2027
• The development also reflects a broader opportunity for edge AI as more devices become capable of running sophisticated models locally

💬 One quote: “There’s a time and place to run AI locally in the device right at the user’s fingertips…And we are really solving that,” - Jeffrey Li, chief operating officer of Liquid AI

📈 One stat: Gartner projects that on-device AI models will handle 30% of user-initiated AI tasks in enterprise applications by 2029, up from almost zero in 2026

Subscribe to our free newsletters to never miss a beat in sustainability.

The world needs sustainability knowledge. At illuminem, no interest group or shareholder can influence our work. Thank you for supporting our mission to make high-quality and independent sustainability information free for all. Every contribution helps. Thank you for donating today.