Artificial intelligence on the go: Azure OpenAI helps make better decisions in the transportation industry

Microsoft Azure OpenAI supports the transportation industry through innovative business applications. Learn how four Microsoft customers used Azure OpenAI to improve business operations and make better decisions.

Since the invention of the wheel in 3500 BC, the world has become an increasingly fast-moving place. The Industrial Revolution introduced steam trains and ships, revolutionizing travel by land and sea. The 20th century saw the advent of automobiles and airplanes, which drastically reduced travel times and changed global connectivity. And today, AI is driving how quickly and intelligently businesses can move both goods and people, and there’s no slowing down in sight: global AI in transportation is expected to reach $23.11 billion by 2032.¹

Azure OpenAI is driving change in transportation

Microsoft Azure OpenAI supports the transportation industry through innovative business applications. TomTom Digital Cockpit, powered by Azure, offers an immersive in-car infotainment system that improves driver interaction, which the company claims reduces costs. CarMax uses Azure OpenAI Service to streamline content creation for its automotive research pages. Fraport integrates AI with Azure OpenAI to automate operations and assist employees, prepare for future growth despite downsizing, and Alstom uses AI to increase operational efficiency across its value chain, support its Engineering 4.0 vision, and improve specification quality and project management . All four represent significant progress towards smarter and more efficient transport solutions. Read on to learn how each Microsoft customer below is using Azure OpenAI to improve business operations.

TomTom brings AI-powered talking cars to life with Azure
TomTom has developed the Digital Cockpit, an immersive in-car infotainment system that can be customized by automakers, potentially cutting costs by up to 80%. This system uses Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Kubernetes Service to provide seamless control and interaction for controllers. TomTom aims to surpass the smartphone experience by enabling conversational infotainment.The development team for the Digital Cockpit was reduced from 10 to 3 people, and the query response time was significantly improved from 12 seconds to just 2.5 seconds. When evaluating 300 different scenarios, the AI assistant correctly understood and responded to 95% of complex driver requests. The TomTom Digital Cockpit is now available to car manufacturers, allowing them to tailor the system to their brand – speeding time to market and maintaining brand ownership of the driver experience.
CarMax puts customers first with automotive research tools powered by Azure OpenAI Service
Since its founding in 1993, CarMax has grown from a pioneering startup to the leading used car retailer in the United States, selling more than 11 million vehicles. To continue its journey of innovation, CarMax leveraged Azure OpenAI to streamline content creation for its automotive research pages. This collaboration has greatly enhanced CarMax’s digital tools and capabilities, allowing the company to produce AI-generated content that not only helps customers research car purchases, but also increases search engine rankings. For example, generating summaries for 5,000 pages about cars, which would have taken about 11 years manually, was completed in a few months using Azure OpenAI Service. This efficiency has also resulted in an 80% approval rate for editorial review of AI-generated content.Integrating Azure OpenAI Service has yielded substantial benefits, including cost and time savings, improved content management, and the ability to scale and deploy custom models. This service has enabled CarMax to condense extensive customer reviews into concise, readable sentences, improving user experience and increasing website traffic through improved SEO performance. As a result, CarMax’s search engine metrics have seen an upward trend.
FraportGPT leads the way to the airport of the future: Fraport makes everyday tasks easier for employees with the help of Azure OpenAI Service
Fraport AG, which operates Frankfurt Airport in Germany and owns stakes in 30 other airports around the world, is integrating artificial intelligence to automate and streamline operations. FraportGPT, a chatbot using Azure OpenAI Service, is designed to help employees in a wide variety of specialized areas. The chatbot helps programmers create code statements, summarizes long texts for legal professionals, and helps HR and administrative staff create emails and documents. Using artificial intelligence, Fraport is trying to address the problem of a projected 30% reduction in the workforce due to aging, while also planning a 30% increase in traffic over the next few years.The deployment of FraportGPT has been met with enthusiasm by employees who have started using it in various areas such as rental management and administrative functions, increasing efficiency and productivity.
Alstom integrates generative AI into its business processes with Azure AI technologies
Alstom, a global leader in the rail sector, has integrated Microsoft’s generative AI into its operations to increase efficiency, meet its unprecedented backlog and increase customer satisfaction. This AI-driven approach aims to streamline processes at all stages of Alstom’s value chain – including business opportunities, contract specifications, design, manufacturing, testing, supply chain, installation and maintenance. From 2020, Alstom uses AI to support its Engineering 4.0 and Augmented Workforce vision, ensuring that employees can use AI co-pilots to create technical assets faster and more cost-effectively. For example, AI helps in writing specifications for rail systems and can improve specification quality by 25% and reduce costs associated with low quality requirements.Alstom’s internal AI tool, supported by the Azure OpenAI Service, facilitates a wide range of business functions – including HR, finance and project management – with more than a thousand users performing more than 15,000 operations per month. The tool’s content generation, translation and document intelligence capabilities enable massive data processing, thereby increasing operational efficiency.

Azure OpenAI is proud to support Microsoft customers such as TomTom, CarMax, Fraportand Alstom in improving navigation, optimizing logistics and improving operational efficiency and strengthening better customer support, research and project management.

Our commitment to responsible artificial intelligence

Organizations across industries use Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Copilot services and capabilities to drive growth, increase productivity, and create value-added experiences. From breakthrough medical discoveries to streamlining manufacturing operations, our customers trust that their data is protected by robust privacy protections and data governance practices. As our customers continue to expand their use of our AI solutions, they can rest assured that their valuable data is protected by best-in-class data governance and privacy practices in the most trusted cloud on the market today.

At Microsoft, we have a long-standing practice of protecting our customers’ information. Our approach to responsible AI is built on a foundation of privacy, and we remain committed to promoting the core values of privacy, security and safety in all of our generative AI products and solutions.