CES 2026: Samsung pitches “Companion to AI Living” vision, turning screens and appliances into AI partners

Samsung

• Samsung positions AI as a philosophy for unified, personalised tech experiences
• Vision AI Companion makes TVs active home participants with cross-device features
• AI appliances enhance meal planning, health tracking, and insurance benefits.

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Opening Samsung’s CES event, TM Roh, CEO and head of the company’s Device eXperience division, framed AI as a philosophy rather than a product category. The idea, he said, is to move beyond basic automation and towards technology that feels genuinely helpful in everyday life.

Samsung’s advantage, according to Roh, lies in the sheer scale of its connected ecosystem. With AI embedded across phones, displays, appliances and services, the company believes it can deliver a more unified and personalised experience than rivals that operate in narrower product lanes.

The message was consistent throughout the keynote: Samsung doesn’t want AI to sit in the background. It wants it to act as a companion that understands context, habits and intent.

TVs as entertainment companions, not passive screens

Much of that vision was anchored in Samsung’s display business. The company showcased its latest AI-powered TV lineup, led by a striking 130-inch Micro RGB display designed to push both scale and colour accuracy to new extremes.

But the bigger story was Vision AI Companion, Samsung’s new software layer that turns TVs into active participants in the home. Rather than simply improving picture quality, the system aims to guide what you watch, what you eat and even what music suits your mood.

Features like AI Soccer Mode Pro, customisable sound controls and voice-driven requests are designed to make the TV responsive rather than reactive. Samsung is also leaning heavily into cross-device integration, allowing recipes spotted on TV shows to be sent directly to kitchen appliances or mobile devices.

The same AI layer powers new products like the ultra-thin OLED S95H and the upgraded Freestyle+ projector, while Samsung’s 2026 TV lineup becomes the first to support HDR10+ ADVANCED alongside the company’s new Eclipsa Audio spatial sound system.

Seven years of promised Tizen OS updates underline Samsung’s push to treat TVs as long-term platforms rather than disposable hardware.

Smart appliances that anticipate, not just respond

Samsung’s home appliances division extended the AI companion idea into kitchens, laundry rooms and beyond. With SmartThings now serving more than 430 million users, Samsung is betting that data, scale and integration will set it apart.

The upgraded Family Hub refrigerator sits at the centre of this strategy. Now enhanced with AI Vision built on Google Gemini, it promises better food recognition, smarter meal planning and less friction around everyday decisions like what to cook.

Features such as “What’s for Today?”, Video to Recipe and weekly FoodNote summaries are designed to reduce mental load rather than simply automate tasks. Voice ID support adds a layer of personalisation by tailoring information to individual family members.

Elsewhere, Samsung showed off updates to its Bespoke AI Laundry Combo, AirDresser and Jet Bot Steam Ultra, with the latter doubling as a home monitoring device. A smarter, more conversational Bixby underpins much of this interaction.

A new partnership with Hartford Steam Boiler adds a practical twist, linking connected appliances to potential reductions in home insurance premiums.

AI-driven care moves from reactive to proactive

The final pillar of Samsung’s vision focused on health and care. By connecting phones, wearables and home devices, Samsung wants to spot potential health issues earlier and offer personalised coaching around sleep, exercise and nutrition.

The company also highlighted research into dementia detection, using wearables to track subtle changes in mobility and behaviour over time. Health data sharing through platforms like Xealth is intended to bridge the gap between consumer devices and professional care.

Underpinning all of this is Samsung Knox and Knox Matrix, which the company says are evolving to secure AI models, training data and user information as systems grow more complex.