Hyundai Motor picks AI-powered fairy tale app as top idea for in-car platform

An in-car app concept that uses generative AI to create children's fairy tales based on the vehicle's location and surrounding scenery has won the grand prize in a customer idea contest organized by Hyundai Motor.

Hyundai Motor announced Thursday that it had selected "Window Fairy Tale" as the grand prize winner of the Pleos Connect App Idea Contest, held Wednesday at Casper Studio in Busan. The winner received a one-year lease on the All-New Avante.

Window Fairy Tale combines vehicle location data with generative AI to produce stories and quizzes tailored to the region and route the car is traveling through, giving children and their guardians something to enjoy together inside the vehicle.

The idea grew out of a desire to draw children's attention away from smartphone screens during long trips and toward the scenery and local stories passing by outside the window.

"I came up with the idea while thinking about how children could naturally engage with the scenery and stories of the places they pass through on long trips, instead of being glued to their phones," said Jeong I-deun, who submitted the concept. "I wanted to use Pleos Connect and generative AI to make the journey itself a genuinely enjoyable experience."

The contest was organized to gather direct customer input on services that could be built into Pleos Connect, Hyundai Motor's next-generation in-vehicle infotainment system.

Hyundai Motor ran the contest at the Busan Mobility Show from June 26 to July 5, using an All-New Avante and a New Grandeur equipped with Pleos Connect. Participants submitted ideas for in-car apps they felt would be useful or practical during actual drives.

Pleos Connect is designed as an open ecosystem that allows outside developers and a wide range of services to integrate with the vehicle. Through the contest, Hyundai Motor focused on identifying what kinds of digital services users actually want inside their cars.

Of the ideas submitted, 16 were named outstanding entries, with Window Fairy Tale taking the overall grand prize.

The contest is not the end of the road for the winning concepts. Hyundai Motor said it plans to review the selected ideas for potential development as real in-car services. Those deemed viable will go through a refinement process, with the company also pursuing plans to showcase them at next year's Seoul Mobility Show.

"Through this contest, we were able to see what future mobility experiences customers envision and discover new possibilities for Pleos Connect," a Hyundai Motor official said. "We will continue to actively incorporate customer ideas to deliver richer and more differentiated digital mobility services."