Just after Amplify 2025, Greg Uland, vice president of marketing at Reynolds and Reynolds, sat down on the Connected podcast with AJ McGowan, founder of AutoVision and key developer of Rey, our new AI assistant. They talked through the evolving AI landscape and how Reynolds is tackling AI in a unique, groundbreaking way.
Here are some highlights from their conversation.
The Growth of AI
When you look over the last several years of machine learning and computer science, it’s been an unprecedented period of innovation and growth.
“If there’s anything AI is, it’s a super communicator. It never sleeps. It understands your questions. It knows how to go and fetch the data you’re looking for.” — McGowan
With the rapid evolution we’ve seen with AI, it can be hard to predict exactly where it’s going. However, for those building the tools, we’ve gotten to Agentic AI; AI that uses tools and performs actions.
Why Clean Data Matters
As AI tools come into the market, it can be tempting to add them to solve each individual problem. But this leaves you with each piece of software having its own set of data.
When tools don’t interact, there are breaks in communication, and it’s a long process to go from tool to tool, making sure all the data matches across every touchpoint. If you approach AI this way, when you ask it a question, it will pull from inaccurate data and provide inaccurate answers.
“These errors can be pretty costly. We’ve been building this unified AI data layer; it’s a really important piece of the puzzle because it’s what enables something like Rey to work across all our tools.” — Uland
How Reynolds Is Using AI to Revolutionize Automotive
When we began exploring the next step in AI, we realized we wanted our AI tools to not only provide insightful recommendations, but also help dealers actually complete tasks to help improve their productivity.
Instead of just answering questions, we’re teaching AI how to use our software, so it can think logically and take appropriate actions based on the information it processes.
“We’re on the bleeding edge. This is all very new technology, and the newest part of that is Agentic AI. Reynolds is taking a giant leap forward, not just in automotive, but in the technology business altogether. We’re just at the beginning of what this technology is going to do for our industry… so stay tuned.” — McGowan
There is so much more discussed on the podcast, including: industry trends in generative AI, how AI is changing the roles between user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), and AI tools that already exist and are making an impact in dealerships. Check it out on
YouTube,
Apple,
Spotify, or
SoundCloud.
