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Another important theme was innovating around innovation itself
WHEN the electronics industry meets in Las Vegas at CES, its main trade show,
buzzwords abound. But rarely has one been as pervasive as this week.
Artificial intelligence or variations on the theme ( AI-driven , AI-powered
and so on) were slapped across most new products although often the artificial
overcame the intelligence.
Those attending gawped at an interactive bathroom mirror on the stand of Haier,
a giant Chinese white-goods maker. Look into it, like the Wicked Queen in Snow
White, and instead of being told you are the fairest, your data profile appears
on the glass. It displays weight (from an interactive scale), urine-test
results (from a sensor on a connected lavatory) and other health-related
things.
For those attentive visitors who could see past the AI assault, another theme
could be identified: firms innovating around how they innovate. Haier s stand
also had a new device that is the result of combining its product development
with that of another of its brands, GE Appliances (GEA) namely, a washing
machine that reads wireless tags sewn into garments care labels by the
manufacturer and picks the right cycle.
GEA, which was bought by Haier in 2016, is launching a new service called Giddy
to help other big companies make hit products from fringe ideas. The offering
is part of FirstBuild , GEA s innovation lab, which helps entrepreneurs take
new concepts through to small volumes of the finished product. An example is an
induction cooker that uses Bluetooth to control cooking temperatures from a
smartphone.
Japan s Panasonic used CES to tout a new project to change how it designs,
builds and sells consumer products, called HomeX. It wants its divisions to
work together rather than stay in silos, and is also collecting more data to
understand customers needs (instead of engineers adding features that few
use).
CES also underlined that firms will increasingly need to co-operate with tech
giants on innovation. As more consumers get used to smartspeakers such as
Amazon s Echo, they will want other devices to understand voice commands, too.
The e-commerce giant and Google were busy cutting deals to get their virtual
assistants into other firms products. AI may come to mean audio intelligence
at next year s show.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the
headline "All things AI"