AI Dominates 'Worst in Show' at CES Tech Fair

The promise of artificial intelligence was front and center at this year's CES gadget show. But spicing up a simple machine like a refrigerator with unnecessary AI was also a surefire way to win the "Worst in Show."

• The annual contest that no tech company wants to win announced its decisions Thursday, the AP reports. Among those getting the notorious "anti-awards" for invasive, wasteful, or fragile products were an eye-tracking AI "soulmate" companion for combating loneliness, a musical lollipop, and new AI features for Amazon's widely used doorbell camera.

• The AI fridge. Samsung's "Bespoke AI Family Hub" refrigerator received the overall "Worst in Show" recognition from the group of consumer and privacy advocates who judged the contest. Samsung invited users to speak to the refrigerator and command it to open or close the door, but a demonstration at the sprawling Las Vegas technology expo showed it didn't always detect what people were saying if there was too much ambient noise. That was just part of the complications and reliability concerns Samsung added to an appliance that's supposed to have one important job: keeping food cold, said Gay Gordon-Byrne of the Digital Right to Repair Coalition in a recorded video ceremony announcing the anti-awards. "Everything is an order of magnitude more difficult," she said of the fridge, which also tracks when food items are running low and can advertise replacements.
• Ring features rated worst for privacy. An array of new features for Amazon's Ring doorbell camera system won the "Worst in Show" for privacy for "doubling down on privacy invasion and supporting the misconception that more surveillance always makes us safer," said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Among the new Ring features is an "AI Unusual Event Alert" that is supposed to detect unexpected people or happenings like the arrival of a "pack of coyotes." "That includes facial recognition," Cohn said of the new Ring features. "It includes mobile surveillance towers that can be deployed at parking lots and other places, and it includes an app store that's going to let people develop even sketchier apps for the doorbell than the ones that Amazon already provides."

• A sketchy soulmate. Winning the "People's Choice" of worst products was an AI companion called Ami, made by Chinese company Lepro, which mostly sells lamps and lighting technology. Ami appears as a female avatar on a curved screen that is marketed as "your always-on 3D soulmate," designed for remote workers looking for private and "empathetic" interactions during long days at the home office. It tracks eye movements and other emotional signals, like tone of voice. The group says it is calling out Lepro "for having the audacity to suggest that an AI video surveillance device on a desk could be anyone's soulmate."
• A wasteful lollipop. Lollipop Star attracted attention early at CES as a candy that plays music while you eat it. Its creators say it uses bone induction technology to enable people to hear songs—like tracks from Ice Spice and Akon—through the lollipop as they bite it using their back teeth. But the sticks can't be recharged or reused after the candy is gone, leaving consumer advocate Nathan Proctor to give it a "Worst in Show" for the environment. "We need to stop making so many disposable electronics, which are full of toxic chemicals, require critical minerals to produce and can burn down waste facilities," said Proctor, who directs the Public Interest Research Group's right-to-repair campaign.

• A treadmill short on security. "Worst in Show" for security went to Merach's internet-connected treadmill that boasts of having the industry's first AI coach powered by a large language model that can converse with the user but also proactively adjust the speed and incline based on heart rate changes. All that collection of biometric data and behavioral inferences raised concerns for security advocates, but so did the fine print of a privacy policy that stated: "We cannot guarantee the security of your personal information."