[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by limeypride

Sorry, bud, your language choices/explanations aren't working for me.

Perhaps you could start by explaining how/why the car considers "office" and "work" synonyms if neither are formally defined in the same way as "home" is?

Not sure I can explain why iDrive's Navigation component has no formally defined work address in the system like it does for a home address outside of a short coming in BMW's thought process. Take Google maps for example as a modern navigation system in which they obviously thought through the most common scenario for end users, i.e., drive from home to work and vice versa so the app has the construct to define both addresses within it.

That said having built a couple of AI driven chat bots for the customer service organization at my last job utilizing AWS Lex and Polly (the engines behind Amazon Alexa) I can explain why the synonyms "work" and "office" are recognized by the BMW assistant as well as the learned model replayed when spoken. Basically, the speech recognition component of the Assistant (aka chat bot) includes both synonyms within it's data dictionary. BMW has defined an AI model for when they are utilized to have the navigation system set a route for a stored address within a defined contact uploaded via a paired Bluetooth smartphone. In the model if there is no contact defined it will then go through the prompting to do so we've both experienced.

My post from last evening describes how to set up the contact properly, i.e., it needs both a phone number and address associated with it as otherwise the contact will not sync to the iDrive system. Once again an oversight in BMW's design and I'm willing to bet the contact syncing logic is legacy code from when the Navigation system was not fully integrated to utilize the contacts but rather only the dial a phone number operation was to make a call. In my world we call that software tech debt.

[limeypride]

Originally Posted by bloozemanAZ

Not sure I can explain why iDrive's Navigation component has no formally defined work address in the system like it does for a home address outside of a short coming in BMW's thought process. Take Google maps for example as a modern navigation system in which they obviously thought through the most common scenario for end users, i.e., drive from home to work and vice versa so the app has the construct to define both addresses within it.

That said having built a couple of AI driven chat bots for the customer service organization at my last job utilizing AWS Lex and Polly (the engines behind Amazon Alexa) I can explain why the synonyms "work" and "office" are recognized by the BMW assistant as well as the learned model replayed when spoken. Basically, the speech recognition component of the Assistant (aka chat bot) includes both synonyms within it's data dictionary. BMW has defined an AI model for when they are utilized to have the navigation system set a route for a stored address within a defined contact uploaded via a paired Bluetooth smartphone. In the model if there is no contact defined it will then go through the prompting to do so we've both experienced.

My post from last evening describes how to set up the contact properly, i.e., it needs both a phone number and address associated with it as otherwise the contact will not sync to the iDrive system. Once again an oversight in BMW's design and I'm willing to bet the contact syncing logic is legacy code from when the Navigation system was not fully integrated to utilize the contacts but rather only the dial a phone number operation was to make a call. In my world we call that software tech debt.

Thanks for the detail! But TL;DR, dude--man, you are verbose.

The conclusions from your substantial testing (thank you) are what I was after--I wasn't asking about the underlying principles or possible implementations.

I think, in summary, the takeaways are:

1. EXPLANATION: you believe BMW's cloud is using AI--you're correct (Bing/Google for 'Azure+AI+BMW')--it's the back-end for their natural language processing and presumably other aspects of their latest BMW Connected experience. Your hypothesis is that the reason for the change in natural-language response (workffice or vice-versa) is AI's language comprehension. Nod, perhaps--that's definitely plausible but it's also an unusual quirk I've not experienced before--preserving trigger or key works are part of natural language responses

2. SOLUTION: create an appropriately-named contact (work/office/both) that contains both a phone number and an address in order for it to sync and become usable within the 'navigation' system's context <--I'll give it a shot

Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes...

[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by limeypride

Thanks for the detail! But TL;DR, dude--man, you are verbose.

The conclusions from your substantial testing (thank you) are what I was after--I wasn't asking about the underlying principles or possible implementations.

I think, in summary, the takeaways are:

1. EXPLANATION: you believe BMW's cloud is using AI--you're correct (Bing/Google for 'Azure+AI+BMW')--it's the back-end for their natural language processing and presumably other aspects of their latest BMW Connected experience. Your hypothesis is that the reason for the change in natural-language response (workffice or vice-versa) is AI's language comprehension. Nod, perhaps--that's definitely plausible but it's also an unusual quirk I've not experienced before--preserving trigger or key works are part of natural language responses

2. SOLUTION: create an appropriately-named contact (work/office/both) that contains both a phone number and an address in order for it to sync and become usable within the 'navigation' system's context <--I'll give it a shot

Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes...

LOL on the verbose as I get that feedback especially when I do not know the audience I'm addressing. In this situation I figured since you have posted regarding password hashes, zero trust security, etc. that you're on-board for the detail. That said my last post is no where near the detail I'll include within one of my published white papers on technology and their use cases.

Full disclosure is my day job is the CTO of a health insurance company (took it as part of a pathway to semi-retirement) and prior gigs have been the CTO of two fortune 100 high tech manufacturing companies after I made my way up the ranks. Thus, my level of verbosity depends on the audience with a different level of detail when dealing with the board of directors vs the engineering/software product teams. Then again no matter how I try according to my wife I do not know when to shut up.

[limeypride]

Thanks for the background info!

TL;DR
My background is similar though more on the product design front. Security was my core focus for 25 years or so. Some ~13 years ago, I joined Microsoft as a security engineer during which time I owned Active Directory for ~7 years and designed a large chunk of its security-related feature set. e.g. the then-modern time-bound identity primitives underlying AD's JIT technologies that are used in today's on-premises Privileged Identity Mgmt solutions. I also worked on many now RFC'd components of our Kerberos stack that were necessary to light up these new AD capabilities. After that, I moved to and owned Windows Server security for a while as well as our Virtualization-based Security (VBS) stack—this is the component in Windows that provides trustworthy, secure runtimes for sensitive synthetic components like the virtual TPM used in Hyper-V's Shielded Virtual Machines. Like you, I've written many whitepapers on the underlying tech or use-cases for these products and have been accused of being 'wordy' sometimes—I disagreed and spent 20 minutes explaining why via email. Hopefully, this helps explain the security-related nature of my posts and what I was trying to understand.

PS: if you've used and like some of these products then . If you didn't like them, somebody else probably designed that part.

Back to the topic: thanks for taking the time to test this stuff. You've got way more patience than me.

[Resjudicata]

Besides navigation, can anyone find me, show me, or give me a full list of commands?
What else can the voice assist do besides navigating?

[Dr.T]

Originally Posted by bloozemanAZ

Have used it as well for the shits and giggles aspect. My favorite gestures are swipe away a call (I do not want to be interrupted in my enjoyment of the drive and amazing B&W audio experience) and the skip tracks when listening to my FLAC source on the SSD in the console.

I have mine set to ‘private’ (or something like that) on the idrive menu so only I see the call/caller ID on the heads up display with no interruption of the music. The options are to accept or dismiss the call (or ignore altogether) from the steering wheel controls.

[Ozzie8]

bloozemanAZ I like your playful, specific, insightful and helpful verbosity! keep it coming

Originally Posted by bloozemanAZ

LOL on the verbose as I get that feedback especially when I do not know the audience I'm addressing. In this situation I figured since you have posted regarding password hashes, zero trust security, etc. that you're on-board for the detail. That said my last post is no where near the detail I'll include within one of my published white papers on technology and their use cases.

Full disclosure is my day job is the CTO of a health insurance company (took it as part of a pathway to semi-retirement) and prior gigs have been the CTO of two fortune 100 high tech manufacturing companies after I made my way up the ranks. Thus, my level of verbosity depends on the audience with a different level of detail when dealing with the board of directors vs the engineering/software product teams. Then again no matter how I try according to my wife I do not know when to shut up.

[limeypride]

Originally Posted by Ozzie8

bloozemanAZ I like your playful, specific, insightful and helpful verbosity! keep it coming

Concisely put. // just teasing

[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by limeypride

TL;DR
My background is similar though more on the product design front. Security was my core focus for 25 years or so. Some ~13 years ago, I joined Microsoft as a security engineer during which time I owned Active Directory for ~7 years and designed a large chunk of its security-related feature set. e.g. the then-modern time-bound identity primitives underlying AD's JIT technologies that are used in today's on-premises Privileged Identity Mgmt solutions. I also worked on many now RFC'd components of our Kerberos stack that were necessary to light up these new AD capabilities. After that, I moved to and owned Windows Server security for a while as well as our Virtualization-based Security (VBS) stack—this is the component in Windows that provides trustworthy, secure runtimes for sensitive synthetic components like the virtual TPM used in Hyper-V's Shielded Virtual Machines. Like you, I've written many whitepapers on the underlying tech or use-cases for these products and have been accused of being 'wordy' sometimes—I disagreed and spent 20 minutes explaining why via email. Hopefully, this helps explain the security-related nature of my posts and what I was trying to understand.

PS: if you've used and like some of these products then . If you didn't like them, somebody else probably designed that part.

on sharing your background as well. Wind back the clock 15+ years and I built IAM solutions based on Sun Microsystems LDAP on UNIX and later years Linux due to the security issues in the Windows Server OSes and AD at the time. Backstory is I sat on the board of the Liberty Alliance which eventually became what we all know as SAML Federation. MS initially did not play well but eventually ADFS was born which supports SAML 2.0 and I'm guessing you likely had a hand in that as well.

Wind the clock forward and on my last gig we leveraged AD and it's Kerberos support to control both the Windows and Linux IAM world. In my current gig which 100% based on AD for the IAM core construct (we also have Sailpoint and Okta layered in for governance and SAML federation/MFA). Thus, I truly appreciate all that you've done in both the AD and Windows security space.

[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by Dr.T

I have mine set to ‘private’ (or something like that) on the idrive menu so only I see the call/caller ID on the heads up display with no interruption of the music. The options are to accept or dismiss the call (or ignore altogether) from the steering wheel controls.

Thanks for the info and once again why I truly appreciate this forum as I for one had no clue that setting existed. Going to try and find it tomorrow!

[limeypride]

Originally Posted by bloozemanAZ

on sharing your background as well. Wind back the clock 15+ years and I built IAM solutions based on Sun Microsystems LDAP on UNIX and later years Linux due to the security issues in the Windows Server OSes and AD at the time. Backstory is I sat on the board of the Liberty Alliance which eventually became what we all know as SAML Federation. MS initially did not play well but eventually ADFS was born which supports SAML 2.0 and I'm guessing you likely had a hand in that as well.

Wind the clock forward and on my last gig we leveraged AD and it's Kerberos support to control both the Windows and Linux IAM world. In my current gig which 100% based on AD for the IAM core construct (we also have Sailpoint and Okta layered in for governance and SAML federation/MFA). Thus, I truly appreciate all that you've done in both the AD and Windows security space.

Wow, the parallels are surprising. If we don't actually know each other, I'll be stunned.

The rest is deferred to PM for fear we'll bore everyone else senseless.

[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by Resjudicata

Besides navigation, can anyone find me, show me, or give me a full list of commands?
What else can the voice assist do besides navigating?

Not sure but found this somewhat less than helpful information in the online manual. I'm guessing that running through the help function in which it will apparently call out all of the possible voice commands is the best we can do for a baseline of expectation. Then again with AI in play there will likely be more permutations possible, e.g., what we've learned to date regarding the navigation function.

Possible commands

General information

Most contents on the Control Display can be spoken as commands, e.g. menu items or list entries. Speak these list entries out loud exactly as they are shown in the list.

Say the commands and numbers with normal volume, emphasis, and speed.

The status of the voice recognition is displayed in the upper area of the Control Display.

Function examples

Menu items

The commands of the menu items are spoken just as they are selected via the Controller.


Press the button on the steering wheel.
›Media and radio‹
›Presets‹
The stored stations are displayed on the Control Display.

Navigation

Destinations can be entered in the navigation system using the voice activation system. It is also possible to say Points of Interest or have traffic reports announced.

›Drive me to 300 Chestnut Ridge Road, Woodcliff Lake in New Jersey‹.
›Take me home‹.
›Are there any traffic messages‹
Communication

For example, when a mobile phone is connected, the voice activation system can be used to start calls or send SMS.

›Call John Doe on cell phone‹.
›Dial the number 1 8 0 0 8 3 1 1 1 1 7‹.
›New text message to John Doe: I'll be right there‹.
Media and Radio

Most radio functions can be used via voice operation.

›Turn on music‹.
›Music off‹.
›Next title‹.
Climate control

Most climate control functions can be used via voice.

›Activate climate control‹.
›Deactivate ... air recirculation‹.
›Temperature [...] at ...‹.
Help on the voice activation system

To have the available spoken instructions read out loud: ›Voice commands‹.
To have information on the operating principle of the voice activation system read out loud: ›General information on voice control‹.
To have help for the current menu read out loud: ›Help‹.

[Resjudicata]

thanks!

[bloozemanAZ]

Originally Posted by Resjudicata

thanks!

Should have added that in regards to what the manual states for music control we know based on my original post it goes well beyond what is stated. Calling out tracks to play from my SSD in the console is my favorite Assistant action to date. And when listening to my SSD when bored of the content calling out my favorite SirusXM stations to play is just icing on the cake.