Ford Working On Voice Assist With Configurable Personality

Ford recently submitted a patent application for a voice assistant with a configurable personality. a modern car's typical feature, but Ford wants to give them individuality.

The patent application, originally filed on August 17, 2020, was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on January 2, 2024. It describes the use of machine learning to develop in-car digital assistants with unique personalities that the user can choose.

The ideas may or may not make it to production, as is the case with all patent applications. However, this is undoubtedly in style given the popularity of ChatGPT.

The digital assistant's response to prompts would be characterized by its choice of vocabulary, tone, pitch, and pronunciation of speech, all of which would reflect these personalities.

The software would be fed speech samples from people who are thought to possess the personality traits the digital assistant is attempting to emulate in order to select the vocabulary.
The carmaker talks about using social media posts, audio and video interviews, books, and articles about celebrities with a particular personality type to help train the digital assistant software, but it doesn't seem to be advocating that digital assistants impersonate specific celebrities, which would probably get them into legal hot water.
Not only that, Ford will enable drivers to receive a more engaging response when they ask for directions by providing names, fictitious ages and genders, and even backstories to the digital assistants.