#pymntsAI

The company is working to support these third-party apps in CarPlay and plans to make this capability available to AI providers within months, according to the report.

Currently, Apple allows only its own assistant, Siri, as a voice-control option in CarPlay, the report said.

CarPlay users have been demanding the option to use third-party AI chatbots because Siri’s capabilities are limited to managing music playback, sending messages and handling navigation, per the report.

A third-party AI chatbot could do things such as providing restaurant recommendations when asked by the driver, the report said.

Apple did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

This report comes about two weeks after it was reported that Apple plans to use a custom AI model provided by Google to increase the capabilities of Siri, turning the digital assistant into an AI chatbot later this year.

The chatbot will be added to the operating systems of the iPhone, iPad and Mac. While Google will provide the AI model, Apple will design the user interface.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “GenAI and Voice Assistants: Adoption and Trust Across Generations” found that 60% of consumers believed voice assistants would become as smart and reliable as humans.

The report also found that millennials and bridge millennials were the most frequent users of voice-activated devices. Among each group, 32% of consumers used the devices.

Meanwhile, it was reported in November that Tesla is developing support for Apple CarPlay in its vehicles after ignoring calls from customers to add the software designed for vehicle infotainment systems. CarPlay is already supported by other car companies.

Apple began rolling out the next generation of CarPlay in May, saying it provides “the ultimate in-car experience” by deeply integrating with the vehicle.

“iPhone users love CarPlay, and it has transformed how people connect with their vehicles,” Bob Borchers, vice president of worldwide product marketing, said at the time in a press release. “With CarPlay Ultra, together with automakers, we are reimagining the in-car experience, making it even more unified and consistent.”

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With the new Material List Builder AI, these professionals can input details of the project and then receive a draft material list that they can edit before accepting, the company said in a Jan. 26 press release.

Once they accept the list, the AI tool will deliver product recommendations together with pricing and inventory availability, according to the release. They can then select and order the products they need for the project.

Master List Builder AI enables users to input the project details by typing them in natural language, using voice-to-text, pasting an existing list from other documents or leveraging one of the AI tool’s starter templates for common projects, the release said.

Once they’ve done this, and the AI tool has generated the product recommendation, users can save the material lists and return to them whenever they begin a similar job, per the release.

The tool is designed to save these professionals the time they would otherwise spend manually creating a list of products, searching for the right ones and comparing prices, according to the release.

Material List Builder AI is available to members of The Home Depot’s loyalty program for professionals, Pro Xtra, and can be accessed within the company’s Project Planning digital platform, per the release.

“Pros often tell us that their most valuable resource for any job is time, so we’re focused on delivering solutions that empower Pros to work smarter and faster,” Mike Rowe, executive vice president of Pro for The Home Depot, said in the release.

PYMNTS reported in August that The Home Depot told investors during an earnings call that contractors, remodelers and other pro customers make up the key base that will shape the company’s market positioning for the next decade.

In September, The Home Depot launched its Project Planning digital platform, saying it helps professional renovators, remodelers and specialty tradespeople plan, manage and execute complex projects. The company said the platform helps these pros manage their projects through a single supplier and collaborate with Home Depot staff in real time.

The company’s newly introduced Waymo World Model is built on Google DeepMind’s general purpose world model Genie 3, which Waymo then adapted for autonomous driving simulation, Waymo said in a Friday blog post.

With Genie 3’s world knowledge, Waymo World Model can simulate a wider range of events, including extreme weather conditions, natural disasters, and rare and safety-critical events, according to the post.

Waymo World Model also enables engineers to use simple language prompts, driving inputs and scene layouts to modify simulations, per the post.

“This combination of broad world knowledge, fine-grained controllability and multi-modal realism enhances Waymo’s ability to safely scale our service across more places and new driving environments,” Waymo said in the post.

PYMNTS reported in November that world models are systems designed to understand how the world behaves rather than just how it looks. These models integrate perception, simulation, spatial reasoning and prediction so that machines build an internal model of cause and effect.

Genie 3 is one of these models, and it can generate 3D environments governed by physics, where AI agents learn by exploring virtual worlds rather than static datasets.

Google DeepMind introduced an experimental research prototype powered by Genie 3 on Jan. 29, saying it uses the latest world model AI to generate and explore interactive virtual environments. The company opened access to this prototype, Project Genie, for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the United States, allowing them to experiment with the world-generation features.

It was reported Jan. 31 that Wall Street reacted to the unveiling of Genie 3 by erasing billions in market value throughout the video game industry due to concerns that the AI system can generate video games from scratch.

Meanwhile, Waymo announced Monday (Feb. 2) that it raised $16 billion in an investment round that valued the company at $126 billion post-money. The company said Google parent company Alphabet continued to support Waymo as the company’s majority investor.

The platform, ai.com, will launch Sunday (Feb. 8) after being featured in a Super Bowl commercial on the same day, the company said in a Friday (Feb. 6) press release.

With ai.com, anyone will be able to generate a personal AI agent and have it complete tasks on their behalf, such as organizing work, sending messages, executing actions across apps and building projects, according to the release. No technical knowledge will be required.

Users will be able to have these agents do things like trade stocks, automate workflows, organize and execute daily tasks, and update their online dating profile, the release said.

As the AI agents develop new capabilities to complete tasks, those improvements will be shared with other agents on the network, making them all more useful, per the release.

Each agent will be private, permission-based and fully under the user’s control, according to the release.

Users can get started on the platform for free. They will be able to access enhanced capabilities and increased input tokens via paid subscription tiers, per the release.

Marszalek will serve as CEO of both ai.com and Crypto.com, according to the release.

“We are at a fundamental shift in AI’s evolution as we rapidly move beyond basic chats to AI agents actually getting things done for humans,” Marszalek said in the release. “Our vision is a decentralized network of billions of agents who self-improve and share these improvements with each other, vastly and rapidly expanding agentic capabilities and accelerating the advent of AGI [artificial general intelligence].”

The Financial Times reported Friday that Marszalek paid $70 million for the ai.com domain name and that this is the highest price ever disclosed for the sale of a domain name.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “How AI Becomes the Place Consumers Start Everything” found that AI platforms are becoming the place where many consumers begin tasks such as planning, learning, shoppingand deciding.

More than 6 in 10 U.S. consumers used dedicated AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity in the past year, according to the report.