Microsoft and Sony have sent console warriors into tizzy over their latest partnership that has nothing to with gaming but everything to do with the future of electric vehicles.
While it may be fun to jump into a comment section about the perceived dominance of a company via its gaming business in comparison to another, both Sony and Microsoft operate at magnitudes larger than either of their console divisions and that includes cloud services, automotive, and artificial intelligence that are all being tied together following a partnered announcement at CES.
On stage at CES 2024 Sony introduced Honda as its partner on a new electric car project called Mobility. Sony Honda Mobility are coming together to reimagine the electric car sector through transport as well as entertainment and gaming.
The linchpin to Sony and Honda’s reimaging of in-car entertainment happens to be none other than good ol’ console rival, Microsoft. Not only has Microsoft helped to drive several conversations around the blooming of AI, machine learning and pre-generative models, it also houses one of the biggest cloud services platforms across the globe.
When corporate VP of Data, AI and digital applications product marketing at Microsoft, Jessica Hawk took the stage during Sony and Honda’s Mobility presentation, it was an easy decision to see all three companies working together on this project. Despite their niche competition in gaming, Sony and Microsoft have already partnered on other cloud services related endeavors and Microsoft’s history in automotive alliance for embedded infotainment software make it a natural fit for Honda.
Generative AI is a new canvas that is amplifying human creativity and creating opportunities for creators and designers to completely transform the in-vehicle experience. We are proud of our collaboration with Sony Honda Mobility and excited to see their innovative use of Azure AI technologies and their ability to build with confidence knowing Microsoft Azure is providing a trusted platform as the AI landscape and mobility industry evolves. As these new technologies come forward, safe and responsible AI will continue to be a top priority for both organizations.
Jessica Hawk
Corporate Vice President
Data, AI, Digital Applications Product Marketing, Microsoft
As Microsoft continues to grow its AI development the company is also scaling its security apparatus to head off potentially negative consequences of using AI in unprecedented areas and today’s Mobility presentation focused on those efforts.
Using a concept car dubbed the Afeela, Sony and Honda demoed the potential combo of hardware mixed with Sony’s library of entertainment all powered and streamed by Microsoft’s AI.
Unfortunately, the short concept video that accompanies Mobility’s website only gives us a glimpse into what Honda, Sony, and Microsoft believe could be the future of electric vehicle experiences. Additional images on the site highlight Mobility’s Personal Agen to provide a conversational personal agent that utilizes Azure’s OpenAI Service as well as an immersive entertainment experience with movies, music that will make use of Spatial audio, and noise cancellation.
Core integrations between inner and outer sensors on the car will help provide Azure’s OpenAI service context to reproduce overlays with 3D object rendering to canvass the world in driving related info with real-time imaging. The Afeela was shown during the CES briefing using Vision Transformer which is a platform that does an excellent job of rendering and detecting global features while delivering an assisted driving experience.
It is unclear now if Microsoft and Sony plan to simply bolster ViT or provide a custom UI extracted layer to customers in the future.
Beyond displaying its Afeela car design and Microsoft partnership, the Mobility project is light on details surrounding the AI layer of its next-gen electric mobile experience. However, developers and fans could sign up for news about the project from the dedicated website starting yesterday.
