General Motors is giving OnStar an AI-driven overhaul, moving the 30-year-old connected-car service from call-center roots to a platform built around an in-house agentic assistant. The company announced the OnStar AI Assistant on Wednesday at its GM Forward event in New York; it will launch in the coming months on the 2027 Cadillac Lyriq EV, followed by additional GM vehicles. GM also plans a new OnStar mobile app in 2027 that will replace the current OnStar Guardian app and the separate apps for Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC.
The assistant will go beyond turn-by-turn help. According to GM, connected cameras can provide live views and crash/safety recordings, and can be set to record automatically if the vehicle senses an event such as an aggressive horn honk, with the clip uploaded to the OnStar app. Drivers will also be able to use voice to control climate functions and ask questions about specific vehicle features. Chief product officer Sterling Anderson called the transition a move from call center to “connected intelligence platform” offering predictive, proactive support.
The push is part of GM’s larger goal of building a $25 billion subscription business by 2030. It follows earlier upgrades, including Google Cloud conversational AI in 2022 and expanded voice responses for routing and navigation in 2023, and a previously announced plan to put Google Gemini in vehicles in 2026. Unlike those efforts, the new OnStar AI Assistant is being built in-house. The announcement also comes as automakers face pressure to make software a central part of the vehicle and after GM was criticized and fined over data sharing; GM says customers can control what data is shared and that connected camera recordings are encrypted, time-limited, and inaccessible to GM and OnStar. With a single source, there are no differing views to compare.