Samsung Unveils AI-Powered, Screen-Enabled Home Appliances (engadget.com) 75
Samsung teased its "AI Vision Inside" refrigerators at January's CES tradeshow. (Its internal sensors can now detect 37 different fresh ingredients and 50 processed foods, generating lists for your cellphone or a screen on your refrigerator's door.)
But the refrigerators are part of a larger "AI Home" lineup of screen-enabled appliances with advanced AI features, and Engadget got to see them all together this weekend at Samsung's Bespoke AI conference in Seoul, Korea: The centerpiece of the Bespoke line remains Samsung's 4-door French-Door refrigerator, which is now available with two different-sized screens. There's a model with a smaller 9-inch screen that starts at $3,999 or one with a massive 32-inch panel called the Family Hub+ for $4,699. The former is ostensibly designed for people who want something a bit more discreet but still want access to Samsung's smart features, which includes widgets for your calendar, music, weather, various cooking apps and more. Meanwhile, the larger model is for families who aren't afraid of having a small TV in their face every time they open their fridge. You can even play videos from TikTok on it, if that's what you're into....
For cooking, Samsung's matte glass induction cooktops are mostly the same, but its Bespoke 30-inch single ($3,759) and double ($4,649) wall ovens have...you guessed it, more AI. In addition to a 7-inch display, there are also cameras and sensors inside the oven that can recognize up to 80 different recipes to provide optimal cooking times. But if you prefer to go off-script and create something original, Samsung says the oven will give you the option to save the recipe and temperature settings after cooking the same dish five times. And for a more fun application of its tech, the oven's cameras can record videos and create time-lapses of your baked goods for sharing on social media.
When it's time to clean up, Samsung's $1,399 Bespoke Auto Open Door Dishwasher has a few tricks of its own. In this case, the washer uses AI (yet again) and sensors to more accurately detect food residue and optimize cleaning cycles...
There's also an "AI Jet Ultra Cordless Stick" vacuum cleaner, which "uses AI to better detect what surface its on to more effectively hoover up dirt and debris."
Interestingly, in January Samsung's refrigerators also got a mention in iFixit's "Worst of CES" video.
But the refrigerators are part of a larger "AI Home" lineup of screen-enabled appliances with advanced AI features, and Engadget got to see them all together this weekend at Samsung's Bespoke AI conference in Seoul, Korea: The centerpiece of the Bespoke line remains Samsung's 4-door French-Door refrigerator, which is now available with two different-sized screens. There's a model with a smaller 9-inch screen that starts at $3,999 or one with a massive 32-inch panel called the Family Hub+ for $4,699. The former is ostensibly designed for people who want something a bit more discreet but still want access to Samsung's smart features, which includes widgets for your calendar, music, weather, various cooking apps and more. Meanwhile, the larger model is for families who aren't afraid of having a small TV in their face every time they open their fridge. You can even play videos from TikTok on it, if that's what you're into....
For cooking, Samsung's matte glass induction cooktops are mostly the same, but its Bespoke 30-inch single ($3,759) and double ($4,649) wall ovens have...you guessed it, more AI. In addition to a 7-inch display, there are also cameras and sensors inside the oven that can recognize up to 80 different recipes to provide optimal cooking times. But if you prefer to go off-script and create something original, Samsung says the oven will give you the option to save the recipe and temperature settings after cooking the same dish five times. And for a more fun application of its tech, the oven's cameras can record videos and create time-lapses of your baked goods for sharing on social media.
When it's time to clean up, Samsung's $1,399 Bespoke Auto Open Door Dishwasher has a few tricks of its own. In this case, the washer uses AI (yet again) and sensors to more accurately detect food residue and optimize cleaning cycles...
There's also an "AI Jet Ultra Cordless Stick" vacuum cleaner, which "uses AI to better detect what surface its on to more effectively hoover up dirt and debris."
Interestingly, in January Samsung's refrigerators also got a mention in iFixit's "Worst of CES" video.
Do not want (Score:5, Insightful)
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I just want my appliances to be appliances.
I’m with you. I can figure out what type of floor I’m vacuuming and if I want to use a carpet setting on wood floors I will. I have a new oven with swing doors (no more door blocking the entrance) that’s digital and nags me if I do not have it connected to the internet. All I want is for it to hold a temperature in whatever cook mode I chose, and frankly have not seen much difference in cook modes as far as result go; and not have it try to tell me what I should use. Frankly, the best c
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Indeed.
I will not connect my appliences to the network so any of these "Smart" features will not work anyway.
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Samsung Unveils More Shit No-one Wants or Needs
There, FTFY.
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It turns out that very few people want these. They don't sell particularly well and it's just more useless stuff to break and another opportunity for the seller to add a "subscription" fee to the cost at some point if they bamboozle enough consumers to actually buy these things.
I was in the market for a new refrigerator a year or two ago. While in Home Depot, I asked the sales person about the units with screens and if they were selling. He said he hadn't sold one in 6+ months.
No thanks.
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it's just ... another opportunity for the seller to add a "subscription" fee to the cost at some point
And spy on what products you buy to report back to advertisers.
Samsung teased its "AI Vision Inside" refrigerators ... (Its internal sensors can now detect 37 different fresh ingredients and 50 processed foods, generating lists for your cellphone or a screen on your refrigerator's door.)
Re:Do not want (Score:4, Insightful)
In particular, I don't want my household appliances to have built in obsolescence when Samsung decides to stop offering software updates for these models 3 or 4 years from now. If that doesn't force you to upgrade, they'll stop offering security updates 2 or 3 years after that and you'll either need to disable Wi-Fi on the device or risk hosting a Russian botnet from your kitchen.
Also, if it's like any other Samsung "smart" product I've ever used, it will develop weird control bugs and start randomly failing to connect to the SmartThings IoT network long before that. No thanks.
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Yep, same here. "Do one thing and do it well."
But with these price-tags, they are not intended for large sales anyways. Probably just there to demonstrate "Samsung can do AI" or something.
let's see . . . (Score:2)
Let's see . . . aside from not wanting such things connected in the first place . . . If there's any company that I would trust less than google and amazon with my data, hmm, which would that be?
(never mind the dismal record of the allegedly "high end" Samsung appliances I've had; both washer and refrigerator failed far sooner than any other I [or my parents and siblings, for that matter] have ever owned)
hawk
Robotic refrigerators are next (Score:2)
How much for no AI? (Score:5, Interesting)
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From the website of my local dealer, fridge "The Family Hub with AI" costs 3200 €, other fridges from Samsung (without AI) of a similar size cost 800 € less. Basically they're charging 800 € for the Smart TV.
Hey, Sammy! (Score:5, Funny)
Only the vacuum cleaner should suck.
Re: Hey, Sammy! (Score:2)
Dunno, man: golden opportunity for pron AND a sandwich!
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Not just that — only the gas appliances should make fire.
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Their vacuum does suck, it's so bad they have to talk about what it does using the name of a competing vacuum company. FTFS: "uses AI to better detect what surface its on to more effectively hoover up dirt and debris." Hoover is a vacuum company, not a verb (unless this is a Samsung-branded Hoover). That's like someone from Bing saying "Our search engine uses AI to Google things faster than ever!"
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In the intersts of reliability (Score:5, Insightful)
These ultra-smart appliances bother me conceptually. The more "stuff" in a product is not just more function. It is more failure. So maybe smart should be left to those things that are designed to be smart, like humans. Leave dumb for refrigerators,
Note that the "smart" usually involves logging into, in this case, the Samsung Cloud service. The smart is not resident in my equipment. It has to log in to become smart. This has a downside. Everything eventually dies, even mega-corporations such as Samsung. All it takes is the cloud services at Samsung to die and I cannot log into my bloody refrigerator? I hope would not have to log into the cloud to open the door. Either way, though, the refrigerator can be effectively taken away from me by an external failure due to the cloud complexity, and snooping, involved. I can imagine how I'd feel kicking myself around my dark house the night Samsung Cloud vanishes, even if only for hours.
Please let me run my OWN bloody cloud that has no phone homes built into it.
{^_^}
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It is more failure.
Failure needs to be risk analysed. A fridge should function as a fridge in all cases. More cloud, wifi, AI etc, all good and fine, but if it fails I expect my food to still be 4C and expect to still be able to set the temperature. If it is competently designed than a feature isn't a necessity. For example: We have an iPod dock where the radio stopped working. We didn't throw it away because we only have ever used it as an iPod dock. That's how features can be added without risk.
Another example, I have a sma
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These ultra-smart appliances bother me conceptually. The more "stuff" in a product is not just more function. It is more failure.
I'm not really convinced by the "more function" part either. Many of my appliances have features beyond the simplest, which add genuinely useful functionality.
My oven definitely has features beyond simply getting hot the normal way: a grill mode, a rapid head which will get it to 200 in about 5 minutes, and a pyrolytic mode which burns off all the shite (all of these make use of
Re:In the intersts of reliability (Score:4, Informative)
My last point is that the screen, which I was sure would hate and ridicule, is really not bad at all. It will show you weather, calendar, rotate through family pics( If you loaded them), suggest recipes. It can also stream pic of inside so that you can figure out what you should buy if you are already at the store (don't use this one.)
tl;dr - Samsung did a pretty good job converging a tablet with your fridge, they just took eye off the ball for delivering reliable fridge and freezer functionality.
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But it still uses the Internet.
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My last point is that the screen, which I was sure would hate and ridicule, is really not bad at all. It will show you weather, calendar, rotate through family pics( If you loaded them), suggest recipes. It can also stream pic of inside so that you can figure out what you should buy if you are already at the store (don't use this one.)
I think it's time to paraphrase Ben Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Privacy, to purchase a little temporary Convenience, deserve neither Privacy nor Convenience."
Also slippery slope, thin edge of the wedge, etc.
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The more "stuff" in a product is not just more function. It is more failure.
From Samsung's perspective, that's a feature, not a flaw.
Please let me run my OWN bloody cloud that has no phone homes built into it.
You can do that [home-assistant.io] with varying degrees of success, provided that you're willing to reverse-engineer your appliance's firmware to make it give up its secrets. JTAG ports, glitching attacks, and Wireshark are yours for the taking! But for all the dubious value that an internet-connected fridge has, you're probably better off buying appliances without a buttload of fail designed into them.
Samsung AI underwear is next... (Score:2)
It has an outlet on the front to let your ding-dong in and out. It integrates with your AI powered refrigerator so you can watch your favorite "ball game" standing in front of your, you guessed it, refrigerator. It integrates with your AI powered Oven, so you can now seamlessly bake your sausages with the click of a button.
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Old technology.
A:\
Floppy dick drive.
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I think if you have more than one sausage, you ought to be in movies.
Cart before the horse? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't want it - can't imagine any usefulness for me in my lifestyle.
But, maybe others will benefit from it, or like it, or whatever.
So, my question is - serious question :
Did Samsung or any such company make these products because their customers asked for it, or some kind of market research or focus group or whatever suggested a real need or potential market ?
- or -
Did they do this because some engineer said "Gee whiz, I can make this happen, let's do it", or some exec said "Oh shit, the other companies are all going AI, so we have to too" - ?
How are these companies making such decisions, who makes them, is it good business?
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It's hard to imagine a product that suits a someone else's lifestyle. I won't buy this, but it would absolutely suit my lifestyle. I come up with ideas of what to cook on the way home from work. Quite often that results in either one of
a) me buying ingredients I already have resulting in them eventually going off
b) me doing a second trip to the shop when I get home because I thought I had something I didn't
c) (rare) wife being home when I call and ask her to look in the fridge.
How are these companies making such decisions, who makes them, is it good business?
Good question, one which can b
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Here's an idea - open the fridge door in the morning and check what's there. Hey I know, radical right! But unless you've got the memory of a goldfish it might just work.
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Here's an idea - open the fridge door in the morning and check what's there. Hey I know, radical right! But unless you've got the memory of a goldfish it might just work.
Without looking tell me everything in your fridge right now. Yeah that's what I thought Mr Goldfish. Blub. blub to you too. I have more important things to do than dedicate any amount of brainpower at all to this problem because the problem itself is actually incredibly small (hence why I said I wouldn't buy it). But small problems that can be easily solved without effort to you is precisely the driver behind every technological advancement.
Don't believe me? I bet you have a remote control for your TV in yo
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I have more important things to do than dedicate any amount of brainpower at all to this problem
Well, I have enough brainpower to devote a fraction thereof to this problem without suffering any untoward consequences. But. to each his/her own.
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"Without looking tell me everything in your fridge right now."
Not a problem.
"I bet you have a remote control for your TV in your hand right now you lazy slob, use your feet, what a radical idea!"
False analogy. You have to go to your fridge anyway at some point because unlike a TV you can't press a button to make the door open and the food to float out, so while you're there check whats in it dumbo.
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You have to go to your fridge anyway at some point because unlike a TV you can't press a button to make the door open and the food to float out
You obviously need an AI robot dog to fetch your food.
Re: Cart before the horse? (Score:1)
There is option d) Stop and buy the stuff you know you don't have and if you find out your missing something when you get home then just make due with what you have. It might not be what you planned but it is all still food.
I put things on a shopping list when I run out so I know what to buy when I'm shopping. But I'm not perfect and sometimes I forget to put something on the list or miss it when I'm shopping. My wife is even worse because she doesn't both looking at the list (which is synched between our
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It will have been B followed by A, and even A was produced with a lot of leading questions.
Someone in either management or marketing will have conceived of it as a way to justify their existence. Studies will have been done including focus groups, asking people if they would buy these products, but also in way which makes them feel stupid if they say no.
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The 3rd option is that they were looking to sell the marketing information, and the 4th is that they plan to sell advertising space on the display, 5th is that they plan to integrate with some food ordering / delivery service.
Samsung has lots of valid reasons to do this, but as a consumer I don't see any reasons to buy it.
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"some kind of market research or focus group or whatever suggested"
Yes, it is market research. When you are out of beer and 70% of your neighborhood is too, the price of beer in you local supermarket will go up by 20%. And you are paying for the tool to do so. Prost!
Self cleaning (Score:1)
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One weird trick (Score:2)
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No, No, Hell NO (Score:3)
Longevity (Score:3)
The biggest problem with such fancy appliances is longevity. Our previous house came with a fridge that we eventually replaced, because of rust problems. Pretty sure it dated from the 60s, so at least 40 years old. The replacement fridge is now at least 15 years old, and doing fine.
What are the chances that these super complicated appliances live that long? Pretty near zero...
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Depends on if the complication affects functionality. If your fridge is still a fridge when the screen breaks or the cloud service dies then the problem you're postulating is non-existent.
The Bosch dishwasher on the other hand which locks certain operating modes behind its cloud... well fuck that device.
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The Bosch dishwasher on the other hand which locks certain operating modes behind its cloud... well fuck that device.
Umm, are you sure that's a dishwasher you're talking about and not a vibrator [goodhousekeeping.com]?
And you thought cloud-connected kitchen appliances were decadent!
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Screens = Avertising (Score:2)
*zero* (Score:2)
I grew up with ever increasing tech. I love tech.
I have a computer. I have a tablet. I have a phone. I have a TV with cable, and TiVo DVR, and Roku Ultra, and Blue-ray, and computer connection. I have a nice little autonomous weather station with radio-controlled clock.
I absolutely have ZERO interest in this kind of crap in "appliances".
1) It is far more crap that will fail.
2) It doesn't/won't actually do anything useful for me.
3) It will try to lock me into some stupid "ecosystem"
4) It absolutely is de
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Unwanted distractions and reminders on the screen, in the case they can't be turned off
The possibility of unwanted behavior from the appliance in case it cannot connect or has functionality disabled by the user
The possibility it will be able to connect on its own and present an information security hazard beyond intended spying functions
functionality locked behind "smart" features which require a connection to work
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Being charged a premium for features you neither want nor need.
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About the only appliance I see merit in being smart is a robot device. Like a vacuum cleaner or mower. There is no practical reason whatsoever to add the same to a cooker, fridge, washing machine, dishwasher or other such device.
Smart turn on (Score:2)
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Re: Smart turn on (Score:2)
But you are right. No internet needed. Just do it on the intranet.
Fridges with screens (Score:2)
Something else no one needs (Score:2)
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This points to a future however, where, all fridges, stoves, dishwashers, etc, have this surveillance.. from all manufacturers... the panopticon... imagine what happens when
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Engineers have a name for this (Score:2)
We call it "creeping featuritis"
This is a disease where marketoids make us add increasingly silly and useless "features" that often compromise function
Social media-enabled oven (Score:2)
WTF? OK, I think civilization has officially jumped the shark.
Obligatory refrigerator (Score:2)
nuts (Score:2)
They are nuts. Samsung is killing its own business this way. Most US consumers are not going to fork over a premium for useless gee whiz nonsense.
A.I. for my stove? (Score:2)
Finally I don't have to be there to watch for the water to boil.
Real time saver there, and I can always watch that fascinating video later and share it with my friends.
I'm kidding of course, I don't have any friends.
AKA spending 2-3x markup on bitrotten junk (Score:2)
These refrigerators will be bitrotten or lobotomized in a few years when Samsung no longer bothers to maintain them. Services will be shut down, tokens & certificates will expire and vulnerabilities will be left unpatched. And then you're left with a fridge which might not even work properly as a fridge, let alone one which is allegedly "smart". It might even be compromised and / or bricked if you're extra lucky.
But hey in the meantime, you get to enjoy Samsung's dogshit cloud services, widgets and ads.
No way (Score:1)