J.D. Power puts AI to work on auto industry analysis

J.D. Power said Tuesday it is partnering with analytics company Palantir Technologies Inc. to put artificial intelligence to work on its automotive industry data sets.

Across industries, companies have been scrambling to take AI to new heights since OpenAI's ChatGPT brought fresh attention to its potential in November 2022.

"We wanted to ride that trend," J.D. Power Chief Digital Officer Bernardo Rodriguez said. "We have the best data sets in the world, the industry has big problems to solve and what Palantir brings is the ability to take all these data sets, apply AI and deploy AI to our clients in a way that is safe."

AI trained on puppet data or low-quality data often generates inaccurate results. J.D. Power has worked for the last several years to increase and expand its data sets as well as to ensure that its data is high quality, Rodriquez said, making the company's data sets strong content for safe, accurate AI.

Palantir's Foundry operating system and AI platform will leverage J.D. Power data to improve repair analytics, analyze battery health in large fleets of electric vehicles and generate intelligent alerts based on vehicle-specific sales activity using real-time data to guide incentive strategies.

"When you think about the auto market, there's so many things happening … for an OEM, it's almost like finding a needle in a haystack," Rodriguez said. "AI allows us to say 'Hey, this is what you should care about.' " The intelligent alert system can inform automakers of threats to market share or opportunities to apply incentives on the ZIP code level.

The companies are jointly developing a data hub that combines automakers' customer engagement data with J.D. Power pricing and satisfaction insight to help automakers and dealers target consumers with personalized messages.

Each of these developments are what Rodriguez described as "decision support" — applications of AI intended to support human decision makers, not replace them.

According to a statement from J.D. Power, several automakers have already integrated Palantir's platform into their strategic planning processes.