By MATT O’BRIEN
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. 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 cameras.
Shouting at a ‘bespoke AI’ fridge that also hawks grocery products
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 invites 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 that also uses computer vision to track when food items are running low and can advertise replacements.
Samsung said in response that “a trade show floor is naturally very different from a consumer’s home environment. Our Bespoke AI experiences are designed to simplify decisions around the home, making life more convenient and enjoyable.”
The South Korean tech giant also said “security and privacy are foundational” to the AI experiences in the fridge.
Who decides what’s ‘Worst in Show’
The judges have no affiliation with CES or the trade group that runs the show.
They say they make the choices based on how uniquely bad a product is, what impact it could have if widely adopted and if it was significantly worse than previous versions of similar technology. The judges represent groups including Consumer Reports, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and right-to-repair advocates iFixit.
“We definitely intend some shame,” said iFixit’s director of sustainability, Elizabeth Chamberlain, in an interview. “We do hope that manufacturers see this as a poke, as an impetus to do better next time. But our goal isn’t to really shame any particular manufacturer as such. We’re hoping that they’ll make changes as a result of it. We’re pointing to trends that we see in the industry as a whole. And a lot of the things that we’re calling out, we picked an individual product, but we could have picked a whole category.”
Amazon’s doorbells once again ring privacy alarms
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.”
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Deskbound AI ‘soulmate’ companion is always watching your eyes
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.” Advocates acknowledged the device comes with a physical camera shutter but said they were unsettled by its “always-on” marketing.
Lepro didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tech lollipop gets dinged for environmental waste
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 spokesperson for Lollipop Star maker Lava Brand didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
A treadmill powered by an AI chatbot fitness coach raises security concerns
“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.”
China-based Merach didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Talking coffee makers and making e-bikes hard to fix
German tech company Bosch received two “Worst in Show” awards, one for adding subscriptions and enhanced voice assistance from Amazon’s Alexa to coffee-making with a “Personal AI Barista” espresso machine and another for a purported anti-theft and battery lock feature on an e-bike app.
Cory Doctorow, author of the book “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It” and himself a “Worst in Show” judge, criticized Bosch’s “parts pairing” to digitally connect an e-bike with its parts, like motors and batteries, in a way that flags a part if it appeared on a database of stolen products.
Even if Bosch doesn’t seek to prosecute its own customers for routine repairs, Doctorow said it could always change its deal with them later, in line with his theory of the decay of online platforms as companies exploit the customers they earlier won over.
Bosch countered that the “Worst in Show” commentators were misleadingly suggesting the company is forcing consumers to utilize features that are optional and, in the case of the espresso machine, already popular.
Bosch said in a statement Thursday “that earning and keeping trust with our consumers, especially in the areas of privacy and cybersecurity, is at the core of our company’s values. Both Bosch Home Appliances and Bosch eBike Systems protect their consumers against unauthorized tampering or control through a comprehensive security concept, using encryption and authentication.”
AP video journalist James Brooks contributed to this report from Las Vegas.
