Is AI in Auto Just Hype? We Went to NIADA to Find Out

Everyone's been talking about AI in auto.

Every vendor. Every conference. Every Facebook ad.

"AI this, AI that."

So we did what any sane person would do...

We booked a flight to Vegas.

The Mission: Separate the Real from the BS

NIADA Convention & Expo (June 23–26, Fontainebleau Las Vegas) was supposed to be THE place to see if AI in auto is legit or just another buzzword.

Here's what we found:

The AI discussion rooms were PACKED. Like, people standing in the back for the full hour. Dealers were genuinely excited about the future in a way I haven't seen before.

The Players That Caught Our Eye

Podium ✅  - They offer an AI BDC that is available 24/7 to respond to your online leads. Think ChatGPT for your customer’s questions and requests. They say it’s trained to handle customer inquiries and schedule appointments for your sales team. Probably the most obvious use case out there for AI in the car business, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Glo3D ❌ - 360° car spins and background editing. Some cool automations built in but honestly not what you would expect of an AI solution. This tech has been around for years now. Be careful of companies rebranding themselves with AI in an attempt to capture the gold rush.

DriveCentric 🏆 - I gotta hand it to them. What they call their AI augmented CRM was pretty freaking cool. It’s what you would expect a CRM to look like in 2025. AI was integrated seamlessly throughout, providing summaries of lead interactions, and autonomously retargeting leads. The downside was the price tag was not cheap, and its a standalone CRM.

The Verdict - Some cool solutions, but still a LOT to be desired.

It’s evident the industry knows that AI is here and will give dealers a huge edge. That being said, there’s some cool stuff starting to pop up, but we aren’t quite there yet.

Integrating Claude or ChatGPT into your CRM and lead workflow is pretty cool, but thats basically the extent of it.

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What do you think? Are you seeing real AI results in your dealership, or still waiting for the magic to happen?

Hit reply and let me know. I read every single one.

-Adam Rafael