Of course, this is an optional feature to be offered on certain variants, details of which will be available only during launch. It’s a little 3in screen that is reminiscent of the new Amazon Echo Show 10, replete with directional microphones that humanize it by turning in the direction of the person commanding it. It’s a little distracting, but MG assures us that it has cleared all regulatory requirements for road safety and once you get over the initial novelty, presumably you will be looking at “it” less every day and simply talking to it.
It’s range of talents are many, but none that couldn’t be handled by the 10in infotainment screen if MG wanted to, so it’s clearly a case of form over function. But to justify it, MG has gone above and beyond to pack it with utilities that will appeal to every kind of driver (or passenger). To MG’s credit, there are even custom emojis that convey the “emotions” of the AI bot via meaningful gestures.
You can ask “hello Astor” for virtually anything that’s listed on wikipedia and it will throw up a result on the main screen, ask it to navigate to a location, play music and activate certain car control commands like AC or windows. It’s ability to understand Hinglish needs to be tested further by us, but MG reps claim that OTA updates will be pushed regularly to the Astor without any user intervention and in fact, its machine learning algorithms will make the AI better the more you interact with it. Most importantly, the responsiveness of the touchscreen is fantastic and feels akin to using an iPad rather than a clunky car infotainment system and is visibly and tangibly smoothe than the Koreans.