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🤖 The worst AI gadgets of CES

We are at an interesting point with AI, where we underestimate its capabilities for creative tasks and overestimate it for real-world ones.

For us, it’s much easier to go to the kitchen and make coffee than to write that lousy Q3 earnings report email. That’s why we love to hang out at the office kitchen, and that's what we expect for other forms of intelligence as well. However, AI is ready to crunch those Q3 numbers and spit out a report in seconds, but it's years away from being able to direct a robot to prepare and bring you that coffee. Understanding our complex world and filtering out unnecessary details is still a challenge for AI.

That’s why electronics with AI in them are still mostly just a gimmick, but CES 2027 will probably be pretty amazing.

In the meantime, let's check out some gadgets that made me do a double-take and wonder, "Are they actually serious about these?"

5. SWAROVSKI OPTIK AX Visio

Swarovski, usually known for their sparkly and wallet-friendly jewelry, has taken a wild leap into tech with AI-powered binoculars. Get this: for the low price of $4,800, you can chuck your birdwatching guidebook out the window. These binoculars will identify over 9,000 species for you. Forget about learning those bird names like Blue-Footed Booby and Great Tit (great name, by the way). Just peek through the lens, and voilà, it tells you what you're looking at, and since you don’t know anyway, it can tell you anything, and you’ll believe it.

They've even thrown in a camera, but let's be real – at that price, you could snag a top-notch zoom lens camera and snap some incredible photos yourself.

I think it's a good use of AI, if it works well, I’d give $480 for it, but $4,800? Forget about it.

4. Samsung Ballie and LG’s Home Robot

The big players in the electronics world showed up with new home robots rolling around your house. Both LG’s and Samsung’s seem to be a mere annoyance. They're meant to be helpful, sensing your mood, chatting with you, and controlling your smart home gadgets.

But here's the thing: we've already got home assistants handling all that for the tech-savvy crowd. Do we really need a robot cruising around our living rooms? One of them, Ballie, can even project videos on your wall.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't have massive blank walls perfect for projecting, nor am I into the idea of living in a cave-like, dim room just to watch these projections.

3. Oro Ogmen - Dog companion

This bot is for those who like the idea of having a dog but not the actual dog.

Oro can give food and treats to your pet and can throw a ball to play fetch with it. I’m not sure if it knows how to aim and it’s a mystery how it gets the ball back. The robot also follows your furry friend around and spies on it for you, so you can watch what your dog is doing and even shout at it to stop chewing the sofa talk to it.

So if you want to skip bonding with your dog by giving them treats and playing with them in person, and you're more into just watching them destroy your home on a screen while you're away, Oro might just be the robot for you.

2.Bmind Mirror

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, tell me I’m the most pretty of them all! And if you shell out between $500-$1000 it will.

This AI-powered mirror from Baracoda is designed to boost your ego. Because nothing's more genuine than praise from a programmed AI whose sole purpose is to shower you with compliments. It's what we've all been longing for, right?

The mirror also doubles as your personal therapist. Had a bad day? Spill the beans, and it dishes out some uplifting words, turns the lights to a chill blue, and throws up a nature scene for good vibes. It even suggests a guided meditation session.

Which is just absurd. After a horrendous day, I just yearn for standing in the middle of my bathroom while my mirror is giving me meditation guidance.

1. Flappie

Flappie takes the crown for the most ridiculous AI tech. The world’s most intelligent cat flap is like a bouncer for your cat. You fix it on your door, and it will take care of your cat’s addiction.

You know, the annoyance when your cat comes home after a long night out, with a mouse or a bird in his mouth? While you can’t divorce a cat or tell it you've had enough of his antics, you can make it sleep on the porch, by not letting the poor soul in with his prey.

So, how does it work? If Flappie spots anything in your cat's mouth, it acts like a no-nonsense bouncer and denies entry.

Let’s be real, your cat will just dump its prey on your front porch, which isn’t much better, but at least you can get this Swiss innovation for just $430. Take that, Swarovski.

ONE MORE THING

Optimus, the Tesla robot is folding a shirt

Elon tweeted a video about the Optimus robot - the humanoid robot Tesla has been working on for a while - folding a shirt. It’s a peek into the future, but don’t be fooled. We are not there yet. The robot is not doing this on it’s own. A human is teleoperating it (aka, puppeteering with it). With that said, it still demos an important thing, that Optimus has all the physical capabilities to do these tasks, we eventually want to outsource to them.

⌚ If You Have One More Minute

• 🤖 How OpenAI is approaching 2024 worldwide elections

• 🌐 ByteDance (the TikTok company) announced a new text-to-video model called MagicVideo-V2!

• 🎨 Back UK creative sector or gamble on AI, Getty Images boss tells Sunak

AI Art of the Day 🎨

Midjourney is amazing at doing polaroid pictures. Here’s a great collection of it. Nothing is real anymore.

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That's all for today, folks!

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