Cerence Inc. announced that Cerence Tour Guide, an AI-powered application for automotive assistants that brings professional, guided tour content directly into the car, is powering interactive tourism content in Mercedes-Benz AG's intuitive multimedia system, MBUX. As the first to deploy Cerence Tour Guide, the automaker's new Tourguide feature is available in select vehicles in Germany in German and English language, providing drivers with information from Germany's iconic brown signs, approximately 3,400 tourist information boards that point out special sites and local attractions. By combining core Cerence technologies like deep neural network-based, multi-lingual text-to-speech (TTS) and natural language processing with high-quality travel content from MAQNIFY, Cerence Tour Guide enriches the technology with the personality and know-how of a human tour guide.

The system leverages technology that will proactively trigger readouts of information about touristic attractions displayed on brown signs at the right point in time; drivers will receive this information spoken aloud with high-quality TTS from Cerence. Drivers can even ask the system to navigate to a destination or attraction that piques their interest during the journey.