AI technology reshapes the home appliance ecology and builds a new smart scene for life

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Recently, according to a relevant report from the Financial Associated Press, Samsung Electronics plans to build AI functions into its home appliances from next year. The AI home appliances launched this time will cover refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners and other fields, aiming to provide users with a more convenient and personalized service experience through intelligent algorithms and big data analysis. With the growing consumer demand for smart home products, the competition in the smart home market will be more fierce in the future. AI home appliances will become a powerful tool for major appliance companies to compete for layout.

Smart home appliances have broad prospects

As an industrial application of the Internet of Things, cloud services and artificial intelligence technology, smart home involves technologies in many fields and has received strong support from the government. In order to further improve the standards and specifications of the smart home industry, the state and various ministries and commissions have issued various policies, such as the "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of a National Unified Market" and the "Action Plan for Promoting the High-quality Development of the Home Furnishing Industry", etc., proposing to accelerate the construction of the standard system in the field of smart home, promote the formulation of relevant standards for intelligent social governance, and accelerate the formulation of national unified standards and safety specifications for facial recognition, finger veins, iris and other intelligent identification systems.

In order to support the intelligent connection of the whole house, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Commerce jointly issued the "Work Plan for the Steady Growth of Light Industry (2023-2024)", which clearly proposes to carry out the development of smart home interconnection, strengthen standard guidance and platform construction, and promote the integrated development of household appliances, furniture, hardware products, lighting appliances and other industries. Actively develop and promote green intelligent household appliances, leisure and entertainment, personal care and maternal and infant household appliances, healthy kitchens and bathrooms, intelligent multi-scene lighting systems, natural material furniture, functional furniture, smart locks and other products. Promote new models such as flexible production, personalized customization, and whole-house customization.

In addition, in the context of the continuous increase in per capita income and the deepening of urbanization, the huge consumer group in mainland China will bring continuous growth momentum to the smart home market, and the future development potential should not be underestimated.

Wen Jianping, chairman of AVC, estimates that there will be about 19.4 million houses to be renovated in China in 2024, of which about 7.57 million are new houses and about 11.83 million are second-hand houses and stock houses, so the demand for improvement will be the mainstream of the home appliance market in 2024. Health, energy saving, green and intelligent are the directions for upgrading household appliances, and there is great potential to promote the trade-in.

According to Statista data, the domestic smart home market is expected to reach $45.3 billion by 2026.

Home appliance companies embrace AIGC

AI is the hottest trend in recent years, and thousands of industries are actively exploring the possibilities of AI applications. The long-dormant home appliance industry is also embracing this wave of AI, and all kinds of home appliances have also been tapped with new possibilities, and with the blessing of AI technology, the intelligence of home appliances has been continuously improved.

Home appliance companies represented by Haier Smart Home, Changhong, and Hisense are all competing to enter the game, and they have increased their AI field. For example, AI TV. Changhong"mural+"TV is equipped with YunfanAIThe large model,It can supportAIThe dialogue、AIThe education、AIThe painting and other functions; Hisense TVE8N Ultra is equipped with XinxinAIInterimage quality chip Pro,It can be based onAIInternium deep learning and algorithm training of massive data,And then comprehensively optimize the picture contrast、Color and other aspects,Bring users the ultimate audio-visual feast。

TCL IndustrialCTOSUN Li said,TV useAIThe technology,First of all, it is to improve picture quality、Sound quality,Such as using AIThe recognition of the environment、Optimize sound effects,Use AIThe identification is to watch movies or play games,Do picture quality matching。 The second is that when users watch streaming media, AI can help the content more accurately match the needs of users, and the ability of large models to capture users' fuzzy needs is greatly improved. The third is AIGC content generation, TV can simulate the sound of waves and rain to hypnosis, and even allow users to play the role of a character in the play to talk to other characters.

The application of AI in air conditioners and refrigerators currently focuses more on energy saving and interaction. Xia Guanghui, assistant to the chief engineer of Gree Electric Appliances, said that Gree applied artificial intelligence technology to household inverter air conditioners, carried out the project of "Research and Application of Key Technologies for AI Dynamic Operation of Inverter Air Conditioners", and independently developed high-applicability AI chips for dynamic energy saving of air conditioners, and established a dynamic energy-saving hardware platform that meets the computing power of air conditioners. Oaks intelligent voice air conditioner can recognize a variety of dialects, which is convenient for voice control.

Haier Boguan refrigerator applies Haier's first AI intelligent fresh-keeping technology "full-space intelligent fresh-keeping cabin", which can automatically identify the ingredients stored in the refrigerator and match the corresponding temperature and humidity to create a personalized fresh-keeping environment.

Kitchen and bathroom appliances are also embracing AI technology. Fotile's "Smart Eye" concept product can be moved to the smoke machine, stove or room, and assist in guiding users to cook and monitor the kitchen through visual recognition; A.O. Smith is promoting the intelligent interconnection of kitchen and bathroom appliances.

Various brands have made efforts to build home appliances in the field

In the era of digitalization and intelligence, home appliances are no longer just a single functional product, but have become an indispensable scene-based element in people's lives. The scenario-based home appliance not only brings unlimited innovation space to brands, but also brings consumers a more convenient and personalized life experience.

Many home appliance companies take whole-house scene customization as the development direction. At AWE 2024, Huawei's booth will showcase the high-end sensory experience of the whole family space (multi-functional spaces such as living room, dining room, and bathroom), the whole space of the industry (hotel, office, etc.), and the all-scene smart interconnection (car-home linkage).

Midea Group released a human factors intelligence system focusing on whole-house intelligent solutions, and launched 3 types of new whole-house intelligent products and 7 new human-sensing technology home appliances. "The 134N smart home architecture system launched by Midea's whole-house intelligent technology adopts a combination of 1 human factor intelligent hub, 3 super terminals, 4 major appliance systems and N kinds of intelligent scenarios, with human factors intelligent cloud computing, through connection, perception and interaction terminals, so that the whole house intelligent home appliances can actively provide services, like a furniture customizer who understands you, to meet everyone's different personalized needs." Shang Zhe, the person in charge of Midea's whole-house intelligence, said.

Yunmi, which focuses on young people, has launched a one-stop whole-house smart solution through the method of 5G+AI+IoT, providing more than 60 types of whole-house smart home appliances + smart home + software services, and incorporating intelligent voice lighting, beds, air conditioners and even range hoods into the entire intelligent system.