Companies are clamouring to present their products as AI-powered, but are their claims justified?
« Come get your AI pillow – stop snoring tonight! »
I’m walking around CES – the tech industry’s annual showcase of all its latest gadgets – in a bit of a daze, until this pitch grabs my attention.
What on earth is an AI pillow?
Motion Sleep, a South Korean company, has a large space in one of the main exhibition halls at CES. Intrigued, I wander in.
First I’m offered a few stats about the consequences of bad sleep. One sign points to the number of accidents caused by drowsy driving. Another goes through the health consequences of sleep apnoea.
The solution the company has landed on is a pillow that detects snoring. It then pumps air into different compartments of a pillow, which gently lifts the head, making the offending snorer roll over and – in theory – alleviating snoring.
This is a pretty typical CES product so far. There are thousands of these kinds of inventions that may or may not take off.
But this pillow is different, we are told. This pillow contains AI.
« With the AI, it can be trained to know what you sound like specifically when you snore, » a representative insists.
« That way it can differentiate between you snoring and the TV or cars outside. »
And the pillow is far from the only device to lay claim to the special power that, we are meant to believe, AI confers. At Samsung’s exhibit, for example, an entire section was devoted to AI-capable household devices.
I’m shown an AI vacuum cleaner – that looks very much like a normal vacuum cleaner – with one small difference.
An « AI » function mode apparently allows the vacuum to assess types of surfaces. It can then apply different levels of suction accordingly.
There’s an AI washing machine that can purportedly detect different types of fabric too.
