Worst in Show 2025: Not All Innovation Is Good Innovation | The Most Overengineered, Unrepairable, and Unsustainable Tech Disasters at CES
Worst in Show 2025:
At least VLC had a neat table there
They better have had traffic cones on their heads. The mental image that creates is quite funny with the contrast to the serious businesmen trying to sell AI one booth over.
Robert's interview with the AI home assistant robot guy this year was unintentionally amazing, the dude was dressed like Jordan Peterson (ie. an insane person) but had all the interviewing skills of a parboiled potato. And he had no clue that Robert was clowning on him so hard.
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/9/24339817/vlc-player-automatic-ai-subtitling-translation
The popular open-source VLC video player was demonstrated on the floor of CES 2025 with automatic AI subtitling and translation, generated locally and offline in real time. Parent organization VideoLAN shared a video on Tuesday in which president Jean-Baptiste Kempf shows off the new feature, which uses open-source AI models to generate subtitles for videos in several languages.
Ok now that's cool. Since it's often all doom and gloom here, celebrating good tech is a nice change :)
Since VLC is open source, can we expect this AI subtitle generator as a separate product that could be used in, say, jellyfin?
This is something I'm very much behind. I think firefox is doing something similar if i am not mistaken. One of my favorite shows is a Japanese tv show called GameCenter CX. Fans create subtitles but its a lot of work. Lately they have been using ai to generate subtitles and while some are a bit messed up, you at least get the idea what is going on and they can work off of that if necessary.
The smart crib seems particularly dystopian to me. We don't even need to wait for children to develop enough fine-motor functions to make use of smartphones or tablets, we can start collecting data on them before they even utter their first word!
How long before the smart cribs have ParentAI attached to them? Let the computer raise your child!
What no AI-enabled bidet?
Actually, I can get behind that.
I see what you did there 🍑🚽
Honestly AI bidet weighing your shit and analyzing the consistency to indicate possible health problems would not be a horrible use for it. A shit ton of bodily functions rely on gut flora. Much more than previously thought.
And resulting health data sold for mere pennies. So health targeted ads can be flooded to your personal device.
Data leaks are about to get even more personal.
Except the "AI" part would be using a linear static formula to adjust the brightness of the RGB LEDs based on ambient light which only works when connected to the wifi and you must install a dodgy likely spyware app that requires a $49/yr subscription to keep it working.
The buttons would probably be a touchscreen though. Which is annoying because now you are running an ugly 2m USB C cable to the nearest outlet you needed to buy a 40w usb-pd charger for they didn't mention you would need to buy on the box - you know, because we all just have the myriad USB charging technologies already in our homes.
shit ton
I see what you did there.
I really love stuff like this.
These are the kind of things rich people would fawn over and hold others over on about having the latest tech. But then it's like, you see this shit, you realize how better off you are without them.
Doubles down too, because within a week the novelty wears off and the rich people don't use it, it's just sitting in the corner, collecting their data, possibly raking in a subscription fee that they forgot about.
I feel like stuff like this is always aimed at average people and the data collection is what offsets the price to make it the cheapest option. Only new money would use it to chase trendy things like this. They end up being slight convenience with added work and expectations on the consumer.
High end appliances aimed at real wealth are usually more about how they can be built in to the house design. Rich people will pay more for a thing that makes the house look like a magazine, and will last years.
Why would a rich person want a fridge that tells them they need to buy milk when their actual human assistant does that?
SoundHound AI’s In-Car Commerce Ecosystem powered by its Automotive AI
Catchy name.
I also liked
LGs AI Home Inside 2.0 Refrigerator with ThinkQ
I was going to try and edit in some more "AI"s but it's already near saturated
They even changed their name to SoundHound AI?
Vendor Electronics Show
I think it's consumer-electronics show, as opposed to an industrial-electronics show... Though I get your point.
So much waste.
Where's the scam booths?
The washing machine with integrated AI broke my brain. This must be the most useless thing I've ever encountered in my entire life.
Not just ai it could also make phone calls
But i can't hear shit when my washing machine is on! Let alone have a fucking phone call! Who comes up with this shit...
Gives it a fallback to send surveillance data to samsung, even if you don't connect it to a network
And it's a Samsung appliance so rest assured it's complete garbage
My ten year old basic units are still looking new. Nothing to really go wrong with them and I bet I can get parts for cheap. I know when they're done because I just wait a little while after I start them, then I know they're finished.
Cheap easy repairs on washing machines are long a thing of the past. Between proprietary digital potted control boards to 3 phase motors, the parts ain't cheap. (I've bought a few to repair them before I learned better) To the sheer unavailability of the repair parts. Make fixing you washer and dryer a time consuming, expensive, and often impossible task.
By the time you figure out the time spent searching for the part you need, the availability of said part, the cost of the part, the expected life of the rest of the machine, cost of all the time spent, you can pretty much be sure it's cheaper and faster to just buy a new one. I can't think of one major appliance I owned in the last 30 years that was worth the time and effort to repair. And I've tried repairing washers, dryers, dishwashers, microwaves, and refrigerators.
The only washers I've ever owned and were worth fixing was those old wringer/washers your Great Grandmother had when she was young. Straight up mechanical machines run by one simple switch, a vee belt, shafts and gears. That's the reason those machines could keep going for 30 or 40 years.
I still use the exact same washing machine that was in the house when I bought the house. I have no idea how old it is, but I bought the house in 2017 and I can't imagine the owner would have left it behind if it was new.
The only problem with it is that the door sensor is broken, so It will actually turn on even if the door is open which it shouldn't do according to the operating manual. Won't make that mistake again though so it's not a big problem.
Meanwhile, the new one in my flat has a soft-button to start/stop, which sometimes bugs out and/or locks my laundry away in some edge cases the devs didn't think of.
I always dread having to replace old appliances, specifically because of the added non-features that inevitably break.