Billboards are the go-to when it comes to car-related advertising, but they do have one limitation: they aren’t great at imparting detailed information such as a phone number, address, or website. This could be because the print is too small, and/or drivers whizz by them too fairly quickly. This is the problem Ford wants to address.

With vehicles now coming equipped with built-in cameras, mainly for driver assist, Ford wants to use the same cameras to also keep an eye out for billboards. It will then use image recognition to put a copy of the ad and project it onto the vehicle’s infotainment system. It will go so far as to analyze the contents of the billboard and generate the appropriate hyperlinks, or a dialable phone number.

Ford could potentially even work with advertising agencies, or the companies responsible for billboards, so that upcoming advertisements would be provided ahead of time to train the system so it could better recognize what it’s seeing, and even provide additional content that loads as a result.

The revenue potential of this system, undoubtedly, will be big. But it can also result in a rather irritating form of driver distraction. It won’t be surprising that one day, motorists may have to pay a premium for some nice, quiet time behind the wheel. We’re cringing already.