The over-the-air update replaces Google Assistant across model year 2022 and newer Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick, and GMC vehicles, but arrives under the shadow of GM’s data-sharing controversy and a looming FTC consent order.

General Motors has announced that Google Gemini is rolling out to approximately four million vehicles in the United States, in what the company is calling one of the largest deployments of a generative AI assistant in the automotive industry.

The update, announced on April 28 and arriving via over-the-air Play Store update, will replace the existing Google Assistant experience in model year 2022 and newer Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick, and GMC vehicles equipped with Google Built-in.

“Gemini delivers conversational AI to millions of drivers across every segment and price point for a wide range of everyday needs. That kind of scale is only possible because of the connected vehicle foundation GM has built through OnStar over the past 30 years,” said Tim Twerdahl, Global Vice President of Product Management at General Motors.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

“Later this year, GM will deliver a more deeply integrated AI experience shaped by OnStar intelligence.”

The scale claim is credible. The four-million eligible vehicle figure is almost certainly larger than any existing single-OEM deployment of a conversational AI assistant in production vehicles.

That reach is a direct product of GM’s decade-long investment in Android Automotive OS, the ‘Google Built-in’ platform that gives Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC vehicles native access to Google’s apps and services, and the connectivity infrastructure provided by OnStar, which has been GM’s in-car connectivity backbone since 1996.

The practical shift from Google Assistant to Gemini is one of conversational depth. Google Assistant in its current in-car incarnation is a command-recognition system: it works reliably when drivers use phrases it has been trained to recognise, and breaks when they do not.

Gemini is a large language model. It handles free-form requests, maintains context across a conversation, follows up questions without restarting the interaction, and is substantially more robust to accent variation and non-standard phrasing.

For drivers, the most visible change will be in how the assistant handles multi-part requests and task-switching mid-conversation. GM’s press release illustrates this: asking for directions and simultaneously texting a family member, then refining the route to add a coffee stop with outdoor seating, all within a single spoken exchange.

The assistant integrates with in-vehicle apps including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, HBO Max, Hulu, and Prime Video, and can draw on web search to answer location and context-aware queries.

To receive the update, drivers must be connected to OnStar, signed into the Google Play Store on their infotainment system, and using US English as their assistant language. The update will roll out over several months and will initially be US-only, with additional markets and languages to follow.

For 2025 and newer models, access to basic OnStar voice features, and therefore to Gemini, is included in the standard OnStar Basics package at no additional charge for eight years.

GM is explicit that Gemini is an interim step. The company’s stated ambition, first outlined at its GM Forward event in October 2025, is to deploy a custom-built AI assistant fine-tuned on proprietary vehicle data and connected through OnStar, effectively a domain-specific model that knows every detail of your specific vehicle, can flag maintenance issues before they become problems, and can learn your personal preferences over time. That assistant is described as arriving ‘later this year.’

Gemini is the commercial bridge: it gives GM four million users of a meaningfully better in-car AI experience now, while the company continues to build the vehicle-specific layer. Architecturally, GM SVP of Software and Services Dave Richardson described the approach as taking a base model, training it on vehicle specifications, distilling it down, and running it on the vehicle.

That hybrid on-vehicle and cloud architecture will matter as models scale, regulatory scrutiny of connected vehicle data tightens, and connectivity varies across markets.

The competitive context is crowded and accelerating. Stellantis is working with French AI firm Mistral on in-car assistants. Mercedes-Benz has integrated ChatGPT. Tesla has deployed xAI’s Grok across its fleet.

BMW has its own AI assistant programme. GM’s path is more incremental than Tesla’s vertically integrated approach, it is leveraging Android Automotive and Gemini while building its own layer on top, but the four-million-vehicle deployment scale is a genuine differentiator that none of its competitors can currently match on a like-for-like basis.

The announcement arrives in the shadow of a significant data controversy. In January 2025, the Federal Trade Commission took action against GM and OnStar over the collection and sale of precise geolocation and driving behaviour data to insurance companies, allegedly without clear consumer consent.

The consent order bars GM from selling such data without explicit permission for five years. GM’s data practices, including reports that it had shared Sharp driving scores with insurers, resulting in premium increases for drivers who had no idea their data was being sold, generated significant public and regulatory backlash.

Deploying an AI assistant that, by design, accesses vehicle data and can learn personal preferences raises the stakes of that history considerably. GM addresses this by stating that drivers will control what data the assistant can access, and that the integration is ‘privacy-focused.’

The credibility of those assurances will be judged by implementation: whether privacy controls are comprehensible, whether defaults favour the driver rather than the data pipeline, and whether the millions of existing vehicle owners receiving an OTA update are genuinely informed and given a real choice before their data is processed by a new AI layer.

The FTC consent order raises the regulatory bar for transparency here, and privacy advocates and regulators will be watching the Gemini rollout closely. GM’s ability to convert its OnStar infrastructure advantage into a genuine AI product leadership position will depend as much on rebuilding trust around data as it does on the quality of the assistant itself.