NOMI GPT will be featured on the new Nio Phone to bring more cutting-edge AI innovations, said Nio's vice president for hardware.

Nio (NYSE: NIO) will feature NOMI GPT, a virtual voice assistant that incorporates AI (artificial intelligence) technology, on its second-generation Nio Phone, which is set to be launched this Saturday, to leverage AI to deliver more innovative experiences.

NOMI GPT will be featured on the new Nio Phone to bring more cutting-edge AI innovations, Nio's vice president for hardware, Bai Jian, said on Weibo today.

Bai said he couldn't reveal more at this time, and that details will be announced at the July 27 launch event.

Nio launched the first-generation Nio Phone at its Nio IN 2023 event on September 21, 2023, with a starting price of RMB 6,499 ($890).

The main feature of the device is the interaction with Nio vehicles, offering an action button that allows users to quickly activate more than 30 functions.

The electric vehicle (EV) maker will be holding Nio IN 2024 on July 27, when it will launch the second-generation Nio Phone and officially launch its vehicle operating system, SkyOS, it said earlier this month.

Nio announced NOMI in 2017 when it unveiled its first production vehicle, the ES8, after the English Know Me acronym.

On April 12, the company officially launched the NOMI GPT, which incorporates AI technology, available for Nio vehicles based on the NT 2.0 platform.

GPT refers to Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which essentially solves for the probability of the next word appearing, sampling and generating a word from a probability distribution with each call.

As ChatGPT has become a hot topic around the world, a number of Chinese companies have also dabbled in research in the field. Nio previously said that the AI large language models give NOMI deeper emotional expression and make it smarter.

In addition to mentioning that the NOMI GPT will be included in the second-generation Nio Phone, Bai explained again today why Nio is making smartphones.

Nio had been thinking about launching smartphones for a long time, and the move was not on a whim, nor was it because some phone makers are joining the car-making space, as some have suggested, Bai said on Weibo.

There's a broad consensus that there's a trend toward deeper interconnectivity between smart cars and phones, and the only way Nio can integrate the device deep enough with the vehicle to enable a new experience is by developing the phone itself, Bai said.

He gave an example of senseless parking:

When a user gets out of a Nio car with a Nio Phone, no action is required and the vehicle can park itself automatically.

Nio Phone has a deep interconnection with Nio's vehicle, the vehicle can automatically sense that the user has walked to a safe distance with the phone.

The user does not need to click any button on the phone to notify the vehicle that it can start parking.

This cannot be done if the products are not from the same brand, as there is no way to synchronize the underlying data and account information, as well as cross-device collaboration, Bai said.

Bai also emphasized that the Nio Phone is a high-end device and a flagship product even for non-Nio car owners.

($1 = RMB 7.2773)

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