The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has become a significant hoopla for carmakers to desperately plead that they are in no way a ‘legacy’ industry. The audience skews heavily tech, and this year, AI voice interaction was hot, hot, hot. In the show-floor demos, trained operators would ask their cars to change the climate settings, schedule a meeting after checking who’s available, and navigate to a destination based on inputs like, “Can you find me a good Italian restaurant?” Seeing the oh-so-2026 label ‘AI’ added to voice control, we’re supposed to believe it possesses higher, human-adjacent powers compared with the voice control that’s been native to our cars for years, or indeed with Siri or Google Assistant. They also claim these systems can hold several conversations simultaneously with different people in the car. Certainly, that should overcome a massive fail with every in-car voice assistant I’ve ever used. I start talking, and at the same time, one of my family also pipes up, and the whole interaction falls on its backside. OTHER STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: Chery PH recorded 82% year-on-year growth in May The Sealion 8 could bring three-row big-SUV goodness to the local BYD lineup But this acknowledgement by AI developers that there are other occupants in the car shows they’re inventing a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Why would my passenger hold a verbal tête-à-tête with the dashboard about reviews for a restaurant? They’d look it up on their phone. The only moment they’d talk to the car is at the end of the process when they’d found nearby parking and want it in the satnav. But even then, they’d probably get more luck tapping it into the touchscreen. And if they wanted to turn on their seat heater? If they have to