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In this context, modern road vehicles can increasingly be understood as robotic systems endowed with progressively sophisticated functionalities, operational flexibility, and, crucially, the capacity to learn and evolve autonomously over time. Building on this perspective, AI-defined vehicles (AIDVs) are emerging in both the automotive industry and the research community as a next stage in vehicle evolution, where interaction capabilities, adaptability, sustainability, and ethical governance are embedded as core design principles rather than treated as auxiliary features. This work aims to introduce this new class of vehicles and provide an analysis of their defining principles, capabilities, and challenges. This article contributes a first conceptualization of AIDVs, outlines their defining principles, and distinguishes them from existing vehicle classes. Then, it identifies the risks introduced by adaptive AI and proposes a preliminary roadmap for their integration into Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2026.1770121","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,2]],"date-time":"2026-03-02T06:35:19Z","timestamp":1772433319000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["When AI takes the wheel: AI-defined vehicles principles and pitfalls"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"13","author":[{"given":"Marco","family":"De Vincenzi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Informatics and Telematics - CNR","place":["Pisa, Italy"]}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Chiara","family":"Bodei","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa","place":["Pisa, Italy"]}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ilaria","family":"Matteucci","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Informatics and Telematics - CNR","place":["Pisa, Italy"]}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","article-title":"Anthropic\u2019s responsible scaling policy","year":"2023"},{"key":"B2","article-title":"Dos and don\u2019ts of machine learning in computer security","author":"Arp","year":"2021"},{"key":"B3","article-title":"A method for the runtime validation of AI-based environment perception in automated driving systems","author":"Aslam","year":"2024"},{"key":"B4","article-title":"An open source ci\/cd pipeline for variant-rich software in automotive systems: devops and continuous delivery","author":"Author Anonymous","year":"2025"},{"key":"B5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1109\/CDC57313.2025.11312449","article-title":"Routing guidance for emerging transportation systems with improved dynamic trip equity","author":"Bai","year":"2025"},{"key":"B6","first-page":"1","article-title":"From hardware-functional to software-defined vehicles and their security issues","author":"Bodei","year":"2023"},{"key":"B7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1499215","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2025.1499215","article-title":"A comprehensive perspective on electric vehicles as evolutionary robots","volume":"12","author":"Che","year":"2025","journal-title":"Front. 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