LG’s AI Will Give You Better Advice Than Your Best Friend

Anywhere is home. Carry the essence of homeness wherever you go. That was the motto of LG’s conference ahead of CES 2020. Pretty dreamy, huh? Definitely the right way to put a deeply rooted yearning in words. But how does it intend to deliver this poetic goal? Connecting any and all devices through their AI platform ThinQ and turning your entire home in a game spot.

Yes, folks, AI was again top-of-mind here in Las Vegas. As CTA predicted at Trends to Watch, artificial intelligence is here to stay and to push boundaries as we go from Internet of Things to Intelligence of Things.

And LG was an example of that. Before the company went into announcing new products, it gave us a view at how they are thinking about artificial intelligence. On four levels, for one: efficiency, personalization, reasoning and exploration.

Efficiency seemed to me as a good term to present what we already have: assistants that can execute tasks in a way that makes our lives easier.

Level 2, personalization, is where LG wants to be this year. According to them, 2020 is the year when their appliances, such as vaccum cleaners, will learn from their mistakes while others will take preventive action to make owners happy.

Level 3 and 4 is still the stuff of dreams, I believe. Here, LG is envisioning an AI that knows you so well, it can suggest activities that make sense for you and even more, help you be more open-minded to new ideas.

At the LG booth, some of the devices that will get smarter in the following years are the ThinQ Fit, robotic baristas and their in-cabin solutions.

But AI ThinQ will really stand out in their 2020 OLED TVs for the US market. Here, the assistant will be able to recognize location of movie scenes or fashion brands actors and actresses wore. While watching a game, viewers will get notifications alerts about other sport-related news. Will that be distracting? Remains to be seen.

Another feature that is coming to LG OLED tvs is Filmmaker Mode. Backed up by testimonials from Christopher Nolan and Christopher McQuarrie, this support translates into disabling all post-processing so the content is displayed as it was intended by the filmmaker, preserving the correct aspect ratios, colors and frame rates.

For true movie fanatics, this will make a tangible difference for the whole experience.

But as sports alerts and movie scene recognition, how many users will actually find this useful, not to mention essential? How many will use the features on a weekly basis, after the excitement wears off? And the more important question: what will people do when tech will take over their routine? Are they ready to evolve as well?