Artificial intelligence, now landing on yachts and managing on-board functions

Artificial intelligence is arriving on yachts in the form of a digital concierge able to support the owner and crew in the management of the boat. Even without a connection. The latest innovation in the field of Ai applied to boating has been developed by Next yacht group, a company that brings together the Ab yachts and Maiora brands, which has installed it on the Ab 110 model, a 34-metre boat.

"For a yacht owner," says Giorgio Mattei, group vice-president, "luxury means simplicity and control. We offer him an assistant that always works, even in the middle of the ocean, in the absence of Internet, in a secure, continuous and reliable manner: an artificial intelligence that belongs to the yacht and its family, not to the cloud. Our approach is local-first: data, models and decisions remain on board. Ai provides verifiable answers, secure commands and deep integration with the boat's systems. In the evolutionary roadmap we plan to integrate more and more new functions and services, such as always-on voice activation with dedicated wake word and predictive maintenance.

The system was presented to the market yesterday, as a preview in Florida, at the opening of the Fort Lauderdale boat show, and will be on display (with live demonstrations, on board the Ab 110, based on real use cases) at the American event, which will continue until 2 November. The Ai assistant, developed in collaboration with Ai technologies (an Italian company specialising in artificial intelligence and machine learning), and integrated with on-board systems, thanks to the support of the Yes group of Viareggio (with long experience in the nautical world), allows, Next technicians explain, 'functions such as lighting, climate, scenarios and entertainment to be controlled, as well as consulting data on the boat's status - from consumption to tanks, from alarms to maintenance - guaranteeing operation even offline, with total data protection and rapid, constant response times.

The Ai will not operate any navigation or support instruments, for obvious safety reasons, but it will use the acquired data to provide answers.  Next Ai integrated system (this is the name of the platform), emphasises Mattei, "is a proprietary project of the Next yacht group and will be available for the entire range of the yard's boats, starting in 2026. The navigation implementation, on the other hand, will be installed on boats for sale in 2026, with delivery in 2027.