SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Love it or hate it, every consumer faces the day when they have to buy a set of wheels, some more than once.
But instead of walking into a dealership to make that purchase, you can just open your web browser.
Chris Hudson calls himself a general manager, but he maybe could add 'developer” to his resume.
“There’s not a tool available like this to dealerships right now that’s this clean,” said Hudson.
That tool being “Nell”.
A so-called 24/7 AI concierge that can help you buy a car from start to finish, with no sales middleman, and can be used by anyone wanting to buy a car anywhere in the country, not just customers of Mark Miller Subaru.
Her claim to fame? She refuses to sell you a car.
“We train Nell, she is a deterministic model, so there’s nothing in there where she would hallucinate," said Hudson. "When you ask another question it’s based on a knowledge-base that we’ve created. It’s basically all of our core values, it's also radical transparency, so if there’s a question that someone asks Nell that she’s unable to answer, she’ll say she doesn’t know the answer, she won’t make it up.”
Hudson created Nell because he wanted his family across the country to be able to make reliable car purchases with ease and without the pressure that car shopping can bring.
FOX 13 put her to the test to see if she’d attempt to sway a buyer either way.
While we won’t be driving away in a Subaru, it’s not because Nell didn’t do her job.
But it’s hard not to think about whose job she is doing.
FOX 13 asked if there is any worry that Nell will replace the jobs of salespeople at dealerships.
“I do not believe so," said Hudson. "What we’ve noticed internally is when people realize that they are not going to be hard sold or sold to and they have a question, then they pull the handle and they eject and they talk to a human. I believe that is what everybody really wants. They just don’t feel comfortable because they don’t want to be sold to.”