Renault ZOE writes On the Road fanfic, becomes first AI hipster – TechCrunch

An all-electric Renault ZOE is writing fan fiction based on Jack Kerouacs novel On the Road to demonstrate how far modern EVs can travel on a charge. Its also a celebration of the novels sixtieth anniversary in 2017. Also, presumably, this willimpress ZOEs latest crush, who loves Beat literature.

The car uses live driving data and artificial intelligence to generate fan fiction authorized by the Kerouac estate in the style of the famous novel. The AI takes information from internal and external sensors as the car drives through Stockholm and turns it into contextual storylines, according to the press release. These stories are unique to each driver, depending on what inputs occur during the drives.

The first step was to analyze the book using theWatson API. The analysis looked for language usage, emotions and social cues in the text. This is the basis for ZOEs in the style of fanfic.

The ZOE has a Raspberry Pi on board with a data collecting scanner, 4G modem and GPS, plus the usual array of sensors in a modern vehicle. A bunch of data is collected from the sensors and the scanner, including speed, acceleration, braking, weather, nearby places and geopositioning.

The ZOE puts all those data pointstogether to generate a Kerouac-style story on the fly based on conditions. It uses the same text-to-speed technology as the Amazon Alexa to read the results out loud in real time during the drive. Back at the projects HQ, the driver receives a thermal-printed version of the story.

The goal of the project, according to Renault, is to ease consumers range anxiety by showing that an electric vehicle like the Renault ZOE can travel 400 km (about 250 miles) on one charge and write a freakin novel in the process. Im not sure how convincing that will be to potential EV buyers, but its on the clever side of quirky.

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Renault ZOE writes On the Road fanfic, becomes first AI hipster - TechCrunch