While artificial intelligence dominated discussions at this year's CES gadget show, its often-unnecessary integration into everyday appliances also secured some products the dubious distinction of "Worst in Show." The annual "anti-awards," which no tech company desires, were announced on Thursday, highlighting invasive, wasteful, or fragile innovations.
Among the recipients of this notorious recognition were an eye-tracking AI "soulmate" companion designed to combat loneliness, a musical lollipop, and new AI features for Amazon's widely used doorbell cameras. However, it was Samsung's "Bespoke AI Family Hub" refrigerator that received the overall "Worst in Show" accolade from the judging panel of consumer and privacy advocates.
A demonstration at the sprawling Las Vegas technology expo revealed the smart fridge's limitations. Despite inviting users to command it to open or close its door, the appliance frequently failed to detect voice commands amidst ambient noise. Gay Gordon-Byrne of the Digital Right to Repair Coalition criticised the added complexity, stating in a recorded video ceremony, "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."
“Everything is an order of magnitude more difficult,” she said of the fridge that also tracks 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.”
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.
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.
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.
“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 voice assistants and subscriptions to coffee-making with a “Personal AI Barista” machine and another for a purported anti-theft 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, it could always change its deal with them later, in line with Doctorow's theory of the decay of online platforms as companies exploit the customers they earlier won over.
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.”
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