Where’s the AI in these ‘AI-powered’ products for your home? [Video]

Around the release of ChatGPT in 2022, AI became the buzzword du jour for tech investors and startups, so it’s only natural that in our tech-saturated consumer world, AI would become a buzzword in home electronics and appliances just a short time later. And boy is it ever a buzzword. If you’re shopping for an appliance with “AI” shoehorned into its specs, someone will sell you something. 

But you may find yourself the proud owner of say, an artificially intelligent toaster, and be left with some regular old hot bread, and a few questions about where all that supposed AI went. 

Artificial intelligence is a capacity or an attribute, not a thing, and it’s highly subjective: the ability to simulate human intelligence, more or less covers it. Philosophers and computer scientists still have to hash out the finer points of what counts as artificial intelligence, what its potential is or is not, and how contemporary “generative AI” …