CEO William Li previously said that the NOMI GPT, based on AI large models, would help increase the competitiveness of the company's existing products.

(Image credit: Nio)

Nio (NYSE: NIO) has formally rolled out NOMI GPT, a virtual voice assistant that incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) technology to deliver a better passenger-vehicle dialog experience.

The electric vehicle (EV) maker today announced the launch of NOMI GPT, which will be available for vehicles equipped with the Banyan system.

Banyan is the system used in Nio's NT 2.0-based models, as opposed to its older NT 1.0-based counterpart called Aspen.

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 ventured into this area.

The AI large language model empowers NOMI to express deeper emotions and make it smarter, according to Nio.

NOMI GPT supports capabilities including encyclopedic quizzes, unlimited chat, and adjusting vehicle functions.

The upgraded voice assistant can answer passengers' questions about different fields such as science, history, art, nature, movies and music, as well as queries about the vehicle.

It can also perform commands including adjusting the ambient lighting in the vehicle and setting shortcut commands.

NOMI GPT, powered by AI models, connects Nio's products, services, and communities to provide a more efficient and enjoyable AI experience, Nio said in a post published on its mobile app.

NOMI GPT continues to evolve, with more features in development, Nio said.

NOMI is one of the first virtual voice assistants in China to be launched by a car company. Nio announced NOMI in 2017 when it unveiled its first production car, the ES8, taking a portmanteau from the English phrase Know Me.

Previously NOMI was mainly used to perform tasks including playing music, navigating, making phone calls, taking photos, and finding battery swap stations.

On March 5, William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Nio, said in an earnings call that the company will rely on the vehicle's computing power to launch the NOMI GPT based on AI models, which will be able to increase the competitiveness of existing products.

On March 11, Nio began recruiting beta testers for the NOMI GPT with an initial intake of 600 people.

The latest version of NOMI had gone through 132 version iterations and brings more than 2,000 features to users, the company said at the time.

What is NOMI? Here's everything you need to know