Grab & OpenAI announces a first-of-its-kind in collaboration in SEA, here’s what it’s about

Grab and OpenAI announced today (May 30) that they will collaborate to build and deploy advanced AI solutions that enrich the Grab experience for users, partners, and employees.

Both brands barely need an introduction, with Grab being the leading superapp in the region known for its e-hailing, ewallet, and food delivery services, amongst other offerings. Meanwhile, OpenAI is the AI research company behind ChatGPT.

This collaboration between the two companies marks the first of its kind for OpenAI in the region.

What the collaboration entails

Leveraging OpenAI’s technical and strategic expertise, Grab is looking into solutions tailored to the specific needs of users in Southeast Asia. As a start, it will be focused on three key areas:

1. Accessibility

Making use of the text and voice capabilities of OpenAI, Grab aims to make its services more accessible to all users.

This particularly addresses the visually impaired or elderly, who may otherwise find it challenging to navigate the on-screen app interface.

2. Customer support

Grab aims to use AI technology to build customer support chatbots that can better understand user problems and help resolve them faster.

Currently, Grab already offers chat features that appear to be automated, but this integration with OpenAI’s technology should bring it to the next level.

3. Mapping

Grab will seek to leverage OpenAI’s vision capabilities to enhance its mapmaking efforts through greater automation and higher quality data extraction from visual images.

This means GrabMaps can be updated even faster, delivering a better experience to consumers and driver-partners.

Boosting productivity

On top of developing AI solutions for users and partners, Grab also intends to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise among select employees through an initial pilot.

Compared to the standard version of ChatGPT, ChatGPT Enterprise offers enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows for processing longer inputs, advanced data analysis capabilities, customisation options, and more.

The objective is to complement existing efforts to drive wider use of AI tools across its employee base to boost productivity.

Philipp Kandal, Chief Product Officer, Grab said, “We’ve been a pioneer of AI adoption in the region, and believe that generative AI has a lot of potential to further transform the way we solve problems for our partners and users.”

He added, “Equipped with the latest tools, we look forward to building novel and delightful experiences for our customers while improving the way that every Grabber works.”

Featuerd Image Credit: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman / Grab CEO Anthony Tan