America This Week Wave 254

America This Week: Harris Poll Live From CES

The latest trends in society and culture from The Harris Poll

Good morning from Las Vegas, where the Harris Poll is on-site at CES 2025.

AI is now central to product and service innovation, from tractors that optimize soil conditions to AI-book scanning voice readings. But this year marks how brands humanized and integrated AI into daily life. The race is now on for competing visions to enhance brand-consumer relationships.

Here are ten things that caught my interest roaming around.

AI-Driven Home Appliances

The digital home has been around for a while. However, Samsung SmartThings builds AI into its appliances to personalize and automate household chores. New AI washers and dryers detect fabric type, soiling level, and laundry weight. They also have a new AI refrigerator that scans food inside to offer up recipe recommendations.

An EV Van That’s Also a Flying Car?!

The Jetsons are finally here: Chinese EV startup Xpeng unveiled its Land Aircraft Carrier, an electric minivan with a small folding eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) vehicle tucked in the back. Once the van is parked at its takeoff destination, the aircraft detaches and unfolds from the trunk with “a single command” – and away you go. 

AI That Reads Aloud Any Book

Ever wish a book on your shelf could become a podcast instantly? Woongjin ThinkBig’s Booxtory is digitizing paper books using AI to provide children with a new type of reading and learning experience. Place a book under the sensor, and the AI will identify the pages, read them aloud, and even offer language translations.

MoMA In Your Living Room

AI is also fostering inventive brand partnerships. Samsung blends art and technology with The Frame Pro, an AI-powered TV that doubles as an art display when turned off, with a catalog of Art Basel and MoMa pieces. Watch the video I shot; it is pretty cool. 

AI That Cuts The Grass

Segway Navimow X3 is an AI-powered robotic lawn mower for faster, more precise maintenance of a broader range of lawn sizes – up to 2.5 acres. Navimow also senses obstacles, from rocks and sticks to pets and wildlife, and integrates with Google Home or Amazon Alexa to offer real-time lawn maintenance data.  Can your Vroomba do that? 

AI In The Crib

When we say AI is being incorporated into every aspect of the home, it’s even in the baby’s room. Bosch unveiled the AI-enhanced Revol smart crib that monitors an infant’s vital functions and surrounding environment with sensors, cameras, an extendable arm to adjust blankets, and a multimodal AI agent. 

AI Travel Agents And Planes That Fly To You

On its 100th anniversary, CEO Ed Bastian’s keynote at the Sphere outlined Delta’s vision for the future of travel. Delta Concierge is their new AI travel manager, offering personalized trip planning, including Jobi shuttle flights to and from home to the airport. CMO Alicia Tillman shared with us in a private session how AI drives Delta’s total customer experience, along with ambitious sustainability initiatives from electric flight to alternative fuels.

AI Tracks Driver Vitals And Road Conditions

LG’s new AI In-Vehicle Experience is an AI-powered dashboard that tracks a driver’s biometrics and attention through real-time heart rate monitoring and facial expression recognition to improve road safety by notifying drivers of their alertness.

The Virtual Human Experience

Dassault Systèmes looks to the future of healthcare in “The Virtual Human Experience: A Journey Through the Virtual City of Life.” Healthcare practitioners are experts, but they’re highly specialized. Here, AI replicates a real human body as a “digital city,” allowing providers to understand inter-organ dynamics in a risk-free environment before making real-time decisions.

What’s Old Is New Again

Finally, not everything at CES was AI-focused or even forward-looking. My Arcade unveiled Atari Gamestation Go is a handheld gaming device with built-in classic Atari games such as Balls of Steel Pinball, Tempest, and PAC-MAN.