Meta · Mercedes-Benz EQS
Tell the Ambassador what kind of driver you are, and it builds your car. Not by presenting every option at once — by asking what matters, what your life looks like, how you want to feel on the road. As you answer, a Mercedes-Benz EQS materialises around you, piece by piece, in a photorealistic 3D interactive environment. Configuration as self-expression. In conversation.
Car configurators are comprehensive. And sometimes soulless.
Online configurators offer comprehensive choice without guidance — every option visible at once, with no sense of who is looking or what they actually need. The showroom offers expertise and warmth, but carries the implicit weight of a purchasing decision. Neither experience respects how people make complex, emotionally resonant choices: slowly, through conversation, with space to change their mind. Meta engaged Astral City to explore whether conversational AI could offer something neither had.
A five-act configuration journey inside a photorealistic cross-platform environment.
Astral City designed and built the Automotive Ambassador: an AI with spatial presence that guides users through a five-act journey — Arrival, Conversation, Exterior, Interior, and Takeaway. Mercedes-Benz was the brand context; the EQS — the model with the widest range of configurable elements — was the canvas. The Ambassador is powered by a custom Agentic AI: understanding what users say, thinking in real time, and responding with the voice, knowledge, and tone of a Mercedes advisor.
Lifestyle-led questions — not spec sheets — produced more considered, personalised configurations. When people describe their life, the right product emerges naturally. The Ambassador never presents a menu. It asks open questions and listens to the answers.
The Ambassador had to absorb Mercedes-Benz knowledge with the precision of a trained advisor and the warmth of a trusted one. Getting that right — in real time, across every turn of a conversation — was the hardest and most valuable part of the build.
One AI backend. Web, mobile, headset. The architecture was designed so the experience isn't locked to a device — it follows the customer. Hand tracking on headset; voice and touch on mobile; the same conversation on web. The Ambassador lives wherever people are.
The project tested whether conversational AI could elevate configuration, foster emotional connection, infer user intent, and embody a luxury brand. All four returned positive signals. A detailed optimisation roadmap positions the platform for a credible path to production.
"It doesn't ask what you want. It asks who you are — then builds a car around you."
Four hypotheses. Four positive findings. A clear platform for what comes next.
The project tested whether conversational AI could elevate configuration, foster emotional connection with a vehicle, infer user intent, and embody a luxury brand. All four returned positive signals. The Ambassador demonstrated a genuine ability to translate lifestyle conversation into considered product recommendations, and to absorb brand knowledge with the precision luxury service demands.
Automotive retail has always balanced two imperfect options: the cold comprehensiveness of digital, and the warm pressure of the showroom. The Automotive Ambassador is a third path — not a hybrid, but something genuinely new. A conversational presence that replicates the best of a skilled advisor: guided discovery, emotional attunement, personalised pacing. Without the appointment. Without the pressure. That is the signal for any luxury brand thinking about what comes next.
Ready to build something like this? →