General Motors is giving OnStar, its subscription connected-car service, a personal AI assistant as part of a broader makeover of the system the automaker launched 30 years ago. The OnStar AI Assistant will debut in the 2027 Cadillac Lyriq EV in the coming months, with more GM vehicles to follow, the company said Wednesday at its GM Forward event in New York.
What changes come with the new OnStar app?
The event covered a range of other announcements, including software, automated driving, EVs, and the company's electrical architecture. GM also said it will launch a new OnStar mobile app in 2027 that will complement and sync with the in-car software. That app will replace the current OnStar Guardian app, which launched in 2020, along with the brand apps for Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC.
The reboot is different from earlier attempts to modernize OnStar, and it puts agentic AI at the center of the service. GM has updated its safety and roadside assistance offering many times over its history, especially in the past five years, as it tried to keep pace with emerging and tech-forward competitors like Tesla.
The changes build on a string of smaller steps. In 2021, GM expanded its OnStar Guardian app to anyone with a compatible phone, even if they didn't own a GM vehicle. The app offered crash detection, emergency assistance, and location sharing. A year later, GM started using Google Cloud's conversational AI, Dialogflow, to recognize specific spoken requests. In 2023 it expanded that capability to give drivers responses to common questions about routing and navigation. Those efforts were part of GM's plan to build a $25 billion subscription business by 2030.
What is the OnStar AI Assistant?
GM relied on Google for its generative AI experience. Last year, the company said Google Gemini would roll out in its vehicles in 2026. The OnStar AI Assistant is different because it is an in-house effort, designed to give drivers and passengers an interactive, customized experience that becomes more embedded in their daily lives.
“OnStar is now transitioning to be a connected intelligence platform, not just the call center that it’s historically been known as, but a mechanism for interpreting, understanding, and providing predictive, proactive support to its owners,” said Sterling Anderson, GM’s vice president of global product and chief product officer, in an interview with TechCrunch ahead of the event.
The new system will tie into the vehicle's cameras. Those cameras can provide live views and record crash and safety events. Drivers can set the cameras to switch on automatically when the vehicle senses an impending event, such as an aggressive horn honk. The system then captures the footage and uploads it to the OnStar app. Drivers will also be able to use their voice to control certain functions, including climate, and to ask questions about specific vehicle features.
The launch comes as automakers across the industry race to match Chinese competitors, where technology is central to the vehicle rather than an add-on. For GM, that has meant changing how it develops software, adopting AI tools, and designing a new electrical and centralized compute architecture.
The rollout also arrives after GM faced criticism and fines over sharing driver data with third parties. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission finalized an order that bars General Motors and its OnStar telematics service from sharing certain consumer data with consumer reporting agencies. The order also requires the automaker to be more transparent with customers and to obtain their explicit consent for certain data collection.
How will GM handle driver data with the OnStar AI Assistant?
GM said Wednesday that customers will be able to decide what data is shared. The company said camera recordings have time limits and are encrypted, and that neither GM nor OnStar can access Connected Camera recordings. A GM spokesperson later said that third-party sharing is “feature-specific and consent-based, with information shared only as needed to provide requested functionality.”
Customers can manage their permissions and withdraw consent at any time. Drivers who choose not to share certain data may have limited access to related features, according to GM, while other OnStar services would continue.
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