Available via the phone number +65 3138 0000, Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta) enables ride booking via natural conversation with an AI voice assistant

SINGAPORE, 5 August 2026 – Grab Singapore today announced the launch of Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta), an AI-powered call service for booking rides. Available via the phone number +65 3138 0000, this pilot service enables ride booking via natural conversation with an AI voice assistant, empowering seniors and anyone who finds mobile app navigation challenging or inconvenient.

Developed in collaboration with OpenAI and powered by its Realtime Voice model, the AI voice assistant is able to engage in fluid reasoning – it interprets intent, maintains context, adapts mid-sentence, and processes bookings unlike traditional automated call services. The Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta) solution is currently optimised for English and Chinese, with plans to expand to more regional languages. Through this pilot, Grab aims to gather feedback to refine and improve the experience.

Philipp Kandal, Chief Product Officer at Grab, said: “Advancements in AI are enabling us to better solve a long-standing paradox: choosing between scale and accessibility. Years ago, live agent call services were easy to use but difficult to scale, while earlier efforts at voice automation often resulted in rigid, frustrating menus. The shift to apps unlocked massive scale, but didn’t work for segments of our community who struggle with digital navigation – often some of the very people who need reliable mobility the most. The Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta) seeks to bridge this divide. By integrating Grab’s proprietary speech technologies and hyper-local data with foundational voice models, we are trying to bring back the intuitive simplicity of a voice call, backed by the flexible reasoning and scalability of conversational AI – taking another step towards safe, reliable mobility for everyone.”

Albert Yip, Head of Technical Success, Asia Pacific from OpenAI, added, “Grab’s service shows what becomes possible when advanced AI is designed around the real needs of the people it serves. By combining OpenAI’s Realtime Voice model with Grab’s deep understanding of its users, our teams are helping make ride booking more natural and accessible for seniors and visually impaired users. It’s a meaningful example of how close collaboration can bring the benefits of AI to more people in their everyday lives.”

Prior to launch, the Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta) underwent an initial trial processing approximately 1,000 pilot calls with various demographic groups. Grab partnered with grassroots digital inclusion initiatives to invite participants to test the solution, including at seniors’ digital literacy workshops organised by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)’s SG Digital Office (SDO), and by Temasek at its Community Day 2026. Early tester sentiment was encouraging, and with the feedback garnered Grab further enhanced the system’s speech recognition accuracy and conversational pacing.

Popo was an early tester for Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta) 

(see the Inside Grab video here)

Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta) builds upon the technical foundations of Grab’s Voice Assistant for the Visually Impaired, which was launched in 2025 to enable voice navigation of the Grab app interface for low-vision users. To enable better parsing of unique regional accents and mixed-language environments like “Singlish,” Grab integrated over 100,000 voice sample donations collected locally.

Developing the AI-powered call service also led to several engineering breakthroughs. A common challenge for voice-based AI is background noise, which often drown out the user’s voice and confuse the system. To address this, Grab developed a voiceprint solution, where over multiple call interactions with a user, the AI gets better at isolating and “locking” into the user’s unique voice as well as filtering out background audio.

AI is enabling new ways to meet people where they are. From Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta) to the Voice Assistant for the Visually Impaired, Grab continues to experiment and innovate to find new ways for people to access everyday services on their own terms.

For more information on the Grab AI Call-A-Ride (Beta), please see the website here: grb.to/ai-call-a-ride