Supplier Soundbytes: The regulatory road ahead for automotive AI

Artificial intelligence is becoming embedded in automotive retail. It is helping manufacturers and retailers create digital showrooms, personalise customer journeys, support online sales and produce vehicle content at scale. As these applications move closer to the customer, however, a new question is becoming harder to avoid: what happens when AI-generated experiences have to meet a regulatory standard?

The EU AI Act brings that question into sharper focus. Its risk-based framework introduces new requirements around transparency, accountability and the use of AI, with implications for companies selling and leasing vehicles to customers in Europe. For automotive businesses, compliance increasingly sits alongside commercial considerations such as customer trust, conversion and brand reputation.

Vehicle imagery is one area where the distinction matters. Generative AI can create or modify images quickly, but it can also introduce inaccuracies into representations of products that customers expect to be factual. The alternative is deterministic rendering, which uses official vehicle and configuration data to produce precise digital representations. The choice of technology therefore has implications for transparency, copyright and the customer experience.

The wider challenge is how companies can continue to innovate while understanding the technology they are deploying. That means scrutinising AI vendors, auditing digital content supply chains and recognising that responsibility can remain with the business using an AI system, rather than simply its technology provider. Regulation also creates a test of whether AI applications are robust enough for enterprise use.

That is the backdrop to the latest Autology episode of Supplier Soundbytes from Mobility Global, featuring Martijn Versteegen, founder and chief executive of IMAGIN.studio. The company provides real-time vehicle visualisation technology, and Martijn discusses what the EU AI Act means in practice for automotive retailers, leasing companies and other businesses building AI into the digital car-buying experience.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Reach out to us at autology@mobilityglobal.com

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