Soon you won't need a wake word to talk to your car

Voice assistants typically need a little nudge to listen to your commands. From "Hey, Siri," to "Hello, Google," to "Alexa," they all need to hear something (called a wake word or phrase) before doing your bidding. With the MBUX system you have to say, "Hey, Mercedes," to get the car to listen to you. Nuance, the company behind MBUX and a whole host of other automaker voice-assistant systems wants to do better. Starting next year, BMWs outfitted with the latest version of Nuance's voice-assistant will be able to tell the difference between the driver talking to passengers and the driver talking to the car.