Uber expands Uber Assistant to drivers

Uber is widening its use of OpenAI beyond internal tooling and customer support into two rider- and driver-facing products that touch the core of its marketplace. In a May 6 customer case study, OpenAI said Uber is using its models for “AI assistants and voice features” that help drivers “earn smarter” and riders “book faster” across its network. The same post said Uber operates at a scale of 40 million trips a day, with 10 million drivers and couriers across 15,000 cities in more than 70 countries. The clearest new element is Uber Assistant, an in-app tool Uber described as an AI assistant for drivers. OpenAI’s account said the product is designed to help drivers from onboarding and first trips through day-to-day earnings decisions, using marketplace data such as earnings trends and heatmaps to generate recommendations in plain language. (openai.com) The OpenAI post also said Uber is using voice features for booking, tying the initiative to OpenAI’s Realtime API, which is built for low-latency speech-to-speech interaction. OpenAI said that API supports direct audio processing through a single model rather than a chained speech-to-text and text-to-speech setup, which the company says reduces latency and makes conversations sound more natural. (openai.com) ### What exactly is Uber Assistant doing for drivers? Dharmin Parikh, Uber’s director of product management, said in the OpenAI case study that the assistant gives drivers “a summarized view of the marketplace and real-time insights.” OpenAI said the product is meant to answer questions drivers already ask while working: where to position themselves, whether the airport is worth the trip, whether to switch from rides to deliveries, and why earnings changed on a given day. (openai.com) Uber’s stated goal is to cut what OpenAI described as “cognitive overhead” for drivers trying to interpret live marketplace conditions while earning. In practice, that means turning dense operational signals into short prompts and follow-up answers inside the app, rather than forcing drivers to read charts or infer demand patterns on their own. (openai.com) ### Where does OpenAI fit in the booking side? OpenAI said Uber is also using its technology for rider voice features that help people book faster. The company did not publish a full product spec in the case study, but it linked Uber’s booking work to the same family of real-time voice systems OpenAI has been promoting for production voice agents. (openai.com) OpenAI’s August 2025 product release said its Realtime API had become generally available with support for low-latency audio, tool use and phone calling through Session Initiation Protocol. OpenAI said the system was designed for customer support, personal assistance and other voice-agent tasks that require interruptions, follow-up questions and quick responses. (openai.com) ### How broad is the rollout? The May 6 OpenAI post says “millions of people rely on Uber” each day, but it does not itself give the more specific deployment figures circulating in social posts about hundreds of thousands of U.S. drivers and earlier pilot groups. Because those numbers were not independently confirmed in the primary source reviewed here, the verified point is narrower: Uber and OpenAI publicly said the driver assistant and rider voice features are live parts of a broader collaboration. (openai.com) That collaboration builds on earlier public comments from Uber about using OpenAI across the company. In a separate OpenAI profile published in 2024, Uber’s Jai Malkani, global head of product for customer obsession, said OpenAI powers AI assistants for earners and elements of Uber’s customer service platform. ### Why is Uber talking about this now? (openai.com) Aarathi Vidyasagar, Uber’s vice president of engineering and science, said in the May 6 OpenAI post that problems that once “felt out of reach” are now possible to address with the technology. The timing places Uber among a growing set of large consumer platforms using voice AI not as a demo feature but inside live workflows tied to booking, support and worker guidance. (openai.com) OpenAI’s May 6 case study remains the main public source on the initiative, and Uber’s next visible step is likely to come through product updates inside the Uber and Uber Driver apps or a company post detailing market-by-market availability. (openai.com)