And they’ll probably shut down the AI servers in a few years for cost reduction making the whole thing a huge waste of money.
'Worst in Show' CES products include AI refrigerators, AI companions and AI doorbells
Submitted 1 month ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
https://apnews.com/article/ces-worst-show-ai-0ce7fbc5aff68e8ff6d7b8e6fb7b007d
Comments
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 1 month ago
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
That’s the point.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
probably shut down the AI servers in a few years for cost reduction making the whole thing a huge waste of money.
It’s like you’ve seen the Portal video chat units. (What a beautiful piece of hardware)
Korkki@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Have you ever seen the commercials from late 1800s where there is the word “electricity” in everything. Electrotherapy for every ill and electric solution for every type of drudgery, electrolyte drinks and whatnot. Same came with discovery of radioactivity. Radium drinks for long life and all that. AI is the modern buzzword for the modern snakeoil salesman.
abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
I remember a story my Dad told me. His boss comes in and goes “we need a computer” (this was the 80s). He asked “why”. He couldn’t answer.
AI now is like that, except when someone asks “why”, they get fired and the boss slams it in anyway. It doesn’t make the product better or even more attractive. Dell has admitted that and is the only company to admit that. At best it’s a shite search engine that’s being forced on everyone against their will.
AI chat bots should be OPTIONAL, not forced onto people against their will. At best it’s a shitty search engine, at worse it is a slop machine.
Only practical solution I can think of for an AI chatbot is an optional voice mode where you can go to, say, a ticket machine and be all “hey, cheapest fare to Dundee” or something and it gives you it, but that can be done without fucking the environment and eating all the ram by just having better UI design.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
AI chat bots are actually a useful workaround for shitty web uis now. When you don’t know which icon is hiding the thing you want, you can just ask the AI to do it for you.
Demdaru@lemmy.world 1 month ago
- I wonder how many enemies Dell made with that lol
- AI chatbots work as customer side if implemented well (if chatbot does not have options, it won’t work well) and if customers don’t knee-jerk into repeating they want human without checking it’s options first (which, understandably, came from dealing with badly implemented chatbots). Their search is quite alright for polling public opinions (useful for example if you are lazy and wanna find overall popular film from some genre - it can summarise reddit, google, few review sites and spit the effects at you).
I know, I know. We are anti-AI here. But please, don’t be simply cynic. This tech has it’s uses, but is so badly used across everything that it’s hard not to be negative of it.
Kissaki@feddit.org 1 month ago
Shoe-fitting fluoroscope “in shoe stores from the 1920s until about the 1970s”
Good times
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 month ago
Like Bluetooth and IoT before it.
Horta@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Very good comparison actually.
xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 1 month ago
I’m just going to install a door knocker.
crank0271@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The hot new category at CES 2027 is going to be AI-powered auto door knockers.
xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 1 month ago
“It automatically does a facial scan of any household visitors using Palantir’s database and knocks the way they would have.”
“Couldn’t they just, you know, knock?”
“Sure, but then how would we track who’s visiting you while making you pay the power bill for our surveillance devices?”
RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
About the Bosch E-Bike, I have a bike with a Bosch motor and they really are that bad. The bike comes with an app and you need to give them your personal data to “unlock” basic features of the app and an electronic bike lock. If you want to let another person use that bike, you need a subscription. I deleted the app. Fuck Bosch.
Kissaki@feddit.org 1 month ago
I’d return it for not meeting basic product expectations.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Are alternative firmwares available?
RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Didn’t find anything, and it would probably void the warranty. But on the upside, using the app isn’t necessary to operate the bike, and the most important features work with the controller/display on the handlebar. The motor lock is disabled for now and I’m resorting to more traditional methods of bike security… a chain lock. The motor lock has a huge disadvantage anyways because it depends on a bluetooth connection to the app on a phone. If that phone for some reason doesn’t work or is unavailable then the bike is essentially bricked. It’s a heavy and bulky cargo bike, so being stranded somewhere with a blocked motor would be bad.
jpablo68@infosec.pub 1 month ago
I refuse to buy “smart devices” riddled with AI, it’s just a drag and not what this tech should be used for.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 1 month ago
true
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Screaming is well and good to build public opinion against this stupidity, but all the CEOs in their towers will heed is no sales.
We need to make it uncool to like or tolerate AI bullshit in consumer products.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Heckling your friends after they dropped $3k on some sloppy fridge is kinda cruel. Advise them hard when they ask for advice - here’s where you say “everyone will laugh” and “stupidest idea” - but commiserate when they realize what they’ve got.
You want to be in a position to offer advice for the next sloppy purchase.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Could preface it with “are you still in the return period for this thing?”.
PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Hey…ummm, can we be friends?
Disillusionist@piefed.world 1 month ago
Hilarious. I bite my tongue so often around these kinds of situations it has permanent tooth imprints in it. But you’re right, someone needs to figure out how to get them to stop tolerating this horrific nonsense.
Rothe@piefed.social 1 month ago
They don’t care about sales, they got that sweet venture capital money and those stock prices.
UsoSaito@feddit.uk 1 month ago
This year, it is no longer Consumer Electronics Show… it’s now Corporate Electronics Show.
bbboi@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Consumer
a person who uses up a commodity; a purchaser of goods or services, a customer
Companies are always chasing stupid ideas. The AI fridge is the Twitter fridge of this decade, a stupid idea some business person was genius.
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Inclusion of AI isn’t meant to be a selling point to product buying customers but to convince retail investors who throw money at anything with AI into buying up shares of stock.
And some companies like NVIDIA and micron have reached a point where retail customer revenue is a rounding error compared to direct corporate sales, so there’s no need to cater them and for some no need to even sell to retail customers anymore.
As things get more expensive it helps create a rental economy, so people having to rent leads to companies able to make money selling to companies that are making money providing subscription services to consumers who have been priced out.
Kind of like the housing market in a way.
thetrekkersparky@startrek.website 1 month ago
I went myself about ten years back when I worked for a small electronics store. It was literally 70% slop and 20% cell phone cases. There was only one company there that we actually got excited about and looked at bringing in their products. Their products were much better than what we currently carried and our current supplier was a pain in the ass to deal with.
They were imeadiatly bought out and closed by the company we already dealt with before we could even place an order. We only ever received a demo unit.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
What’s worse than that are the fully camera, gyroscope, and GPS equipped children’s toys that send all their data to an AI server.
Demdaru@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Gyroscope, fine, I can understand them trying to understand how the toy is utilised.
GPS? Fuck off.
CAMERA?! What in the ever loving…
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yeah, so there are these kids toys at CES now that are always watching and always listening. Gyroscope if the toy is being picked up and moved, GPS to track where in the house it is, or where it’s going outside.
It’s loaded with voice and facial recognition that can track moods and environmental context. But obviously it doesn’t work offline. It has no on board AI, so all the data is sent to a service somewhere which will generate responses for the toy.
I wish it was just one such product being promoted at CES, but I’ve seen several videos now of multiple upstart toy tech brands selling similar AI plushies and such.
lohky@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m holding off until HD AI.
Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
3D A.I.
frostysauce@lemmy.world 1 month ago
AI eXtreme!
We’re going back to the late nineties.
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I just installed a new doorbell button, the little light burned out in my old one.
I don’t have a “security” camera. As far as I can tell, all they do is provide a memento of the crime after the fact, and prompt my neighbors to worry about “suspicious” people outside walking. They seem to do the opposite of making people feel more secure. They seem to raise anxiety.
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Cameras don’t stop anyone, but I still have few recording my yard. It’s more of a hobby and I’m planning to integrate person detection on those to home automation but for me it’s also a small piece of peace on my mind. Should someone steal my car trailer (or a car) I’d have some footage for the police and insurance. Also a while ago we had a decent storm around and we weren’t at home so it was nice that I could check for possible damages remotely.
But absolute majority of time I don’t even think about them. I don’t have any notifications enabled, I’m not interested about neighbors cat running across our yard or getting interruptions every time someone on the family comes or goes. And while Frigate has some AI things built in, the whole thing runs locally. There’s no way I’d install nest or some other camera which sends/stores data to anywhere which isn’t 100% in my control.
YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
My dad installed cheap chinese cams all over his place and his job now is to check the footage to see if there is anything suspicious. There’s never anything suspicious and he’s just wasting his time while also getting more paranoid. The biggest issue I see is that he hoards chinesium and bloats his phone with it. It’ infuriating.
Widdershins@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I have a button for a doorbell at my door. Hasn’t worked since I moved in. If I wanted it to work and raise anxiety I would figure out how to make it spray water on whoever is at the door.
umbraroze@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
A candy that plays music while you eat it
This is the sort of misapplication of technology that traumatised me as a kid, dammit
ThomasWilliams@lemmy.world 1 month ago
When I was in year 5 the kids in the class had been working cutting apricots and they bought tonnes of candy and these whistles they were blowing all the time.
How much did the whistles cost ? one cent.
True story.
DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
I prefer a toothbrush that plays music while you use it
tpyo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I watched a video about the worst of CES. I was kind of amused that some of the winners of worst-of weren’t even new ideas
There was a candy I remember that from a long time ago, idk 2000ish? It was a lollipop you bit down on and you could hear music played through your teeth. I never tried it but it was sold where I worked
Another idea, the worst of the worst, was the smart fridge. I remember from business classes I took many years ago used that as an example of innovation. Or a “smart” microwave. You let it know what ingredients you have, for example by scanning the barcode, so it can recommend recipes or alert you when something is running low
The rendition of those ideas at the CES were so out of touch
zewm@lemmy.world 1 month ago
FireWire400@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Why is that coffee machine showing me a picture of the Sydney Opera House instead of making coffee?
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I just got a WiFi stove that should be marketed as one of those bad ideas.
My requirements were
- induction burners
- air fryer
The closest I could find had all this “smart” crap, and convection oven was as close as I could get to air fryer
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 1 month ago
We are getting to the point where we are going to have a real life Talkie toaster from Red Dwarf without the comedy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HqGSioLCOQ&t=43
Minimac@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I won’t buy AI stuff 🤮
DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Now if things you could do with simple if/else algorithms are using “AI”
Kissaki@feddit.org 1 month ago
a candy that plays music while you eat it
What the heck. The whole paragraph is so ‘unnecessary technology’.
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Good for destroying them with a baseball bat.
DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Rather freeze AI completely than use an AI refridgerator
Surp@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Cancer website
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 month ago
i saw AI vacumn/dust cleaner being sold online.
necrobius@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I’m pretty sure I had a musical lollipop back in the 90s.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 1 month ago
at this point its glorified Market Saturation.
Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
AI has lost all meaning, is facial recognition AI because that would br useful in a doorbell.
roserose56@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
It sucks… really it sucksm
floofloof@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
They deserve to sell none of their shitty fridges.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This is the same Samsung that sold fridges with giant LCD screens on them, ostensibly to help the buyer, but then later turned that expensive screen into a billboard showing ads to the fridge buyer in their kitchen. Samsung has shown who they are. Anyone that buys an AI fridge from them will have no one to blame but themselves.
thejml@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I feel like the problem here is that you get people who are curious or like the other features the fridge has and just get what they can when theirs goes out. And while, sure, those people learn not to do that again, by that point the industry used that sales data as a “they must like it, lets do it across the board!” Instead of asking people or taking anything else into account when figuring out what products to continue making.
In 10 yrs when those fridges die and people who “learned their lesson” go to buy a new fridge, there will be zero fridges without AI because marketing thought thats why they bought it and no one has any ability to buy a non-AI fridge anymore.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 month ago
These also have an entire computer running Tizen behind the screen in the door, which generates waste heat and dumps it… into your refrigerator. Genius!
RamRabbit@lemmy.world 1 month ago
My AI-less fridge is quite private and secure. Furthermore, it keeps food cold perfectly!
Jrockwar@feddit.uk 1 month ago
It might not be sexy, but I’d argue it doesn’t need AI to be.
Take the SMEG ones as an example - they’re not my cup of tea, but the amount of people who are willing to pay a premium for a fridge that doesn’t do anything special other than looking nice shows clearly that. !image
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
There’s an effort combination here - to buy things that just work, you need not only demand, but their sufficient production and companies choosing that niche to concentrate, because they don’t have an option of something with “AI”.
It’s like negotiation, of what to produce. There’s elasticity of demand based on niche similar to that of demand by price. If you need a fridge and there are only AI fridges offered, you’ll buy an AI fridge.
So you won’t be able to buy something that just works when all companies with sufficient power to design and produce fridges want AI.
There’s also some stickiness there, like a hysteresis, and the current combined effort at AI promotion, even if not at equilibrium of said AI’s attractiveness for said elasticity, will hold. Unless there will be another combined effort at killing it with fire.
That is similar to 4:3 display ratio, ergonomic user interfaces, or perhaps home appliances that came with schematics, but not anymore.
someacnt@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You know that is a lie, a lip service for the gullible mass. Samsung just does not care about security and privacy because it does not boost their profits.
njordomir@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yup, I think an ice dispenser and a fancy-schmancy high speed water tap is justifiable for most people, but I can’t think of a realistic use case for a screen that outweighs the many negatives.
THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Do they… do they know what the C in CES stands for?
crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Nothing now. The branding has completely pivoted, CES isn’t even an acronym anymore.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
cunts
Kissaki@feddit.org 1 month ago
Connected?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Imagesuck it, Jin Yang
darkmarx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve had a few Samsung appliances. They are, by far, the worst appliances I’ve owned. I will not be buying another from them. If they want to make life more convenient, they need to make better devices, not shove screens, wifi, and AI into their crappy products.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Don’t worry, in the realm of major appliances the majority of what these bozos are calling “AI” actually isn’t. They’re just using it as a buzzword because they think it’s popular.
LG, selling a washing machine two years ago: “It has weight sensors to determine the load size.”
LG, selling the same damn washing machine today: “With exclusive LG® AI DD™ Technology!!!”
(I am not making this up.)
nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 month ago
Even their older, simpler fridges are crappy. We bought one because our previous fridge conked out in mid-pandemic when the selection of new appliances was low. It lasted about three years before developing an issue that would have cost us more to fix than just replacing the damned thing. So we replaced it with some cheaper probably-Chinese brand I’d never heard of before and will never buy another Samsung appliance again if we can help it. AI will just add expensive, useless functions on top of their already poor design and dubious manufacturing.
In other words, if these become the only fridges in existence, I may just try to find out where I can purchase an old-fashioned icebox.
W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
I have a rule: if the company has ever made a phone or TV I will never buy their appliance.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 month ago
using AI and privacy in the same sentence should be a crime. almost everything AI does is datamining people.
SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 1 month ago
So it's like fashion shows, where they have the most ridiculous shit walking down the catwalk, instead of actual clothes that people will wear?