Omnia, an AI-powered smart mirror, that can track health. A BMW X3 with an Amazon Alexa powered-personal assistant that can help navigate. A L’Oreal robotic arm that can apply lipstick. Nvidia’s DIGITS, an AI-powered supercomputer, that sits on your desktop. These are just some of the innovations from the show floor at CES this year.
Despite fires burning, wars waging and a new administration looming, companies from around the globe descended upon Las Vegas offering glimmers of hope for the future.
“Tech isn’t just advancing, it’s uniting, bringing us closer to an autonomous future, connecting us, making life more connected more dynamic and more human,” said Yuki Kusumi, CEO of Panasonic, during a CES keynote. “Today’s challenges demand bold solutions and CES is where they start to take shape.”
AI, of course, was ever-present at CES, with the hopes that this technology will improve human lives providing everything from smoother travel experiences to better health and more efficiency at work. Delta launched an AI-powered Concierge, a new customer experience tool that uses Gen AI and voice processing to listen, understand and respond intelligently to customers’ unique needs in real time.
The technology is expanding from generative AI, which is based on large language models, towards the rise of physical AI and agentic AI. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said, “The next frontier of AI is physical AI,” while sharing innovations in logistics tools for companies like fleets of self-driving trucks and robotic assembly line workers that understand physical spaces using artificial intelligence.
Raja Rajamannar, CMO of Mastercard, said that while generative AI was the breakthrough last year, agentic AI is the key tech this year. Rather than serving up pre-made content like generative AI does, agentic AI can make decisions, take actions and learn on its own. Rajamannar said that consumers don’t care how it works, they just want to benefit from the end results benefit. Equating it to most people not thinking about how electricity works, they just want to be able to turn the lights on or see that the fan works.
As brands begin to rely more on AI tools, many are trying to even the scales ensuring that the human side of things is not lost to a Minority Report-style future. AI is there to help us, not to take over. But, of course, in a world of deep fakes and privacy concerns, the challenge for brands will be to focus on building trust. “Trust, transparency, tenacity. That is how you become innovative,” said Daniel Head, CEO, at Jacquard, at the Brand Innovators Leadership Summit at CES.
Partnership was also a widely discussed topic at CES this year. Delta has new deals with YouTube, DraftKings, Roblox and Uber (you can soon earn SkyMiles on Uber rides). Bosch has teamed with Google, Apple and Amazon on smart home integrations. Nvidia is working with Toyota and Volvo, among other car companies.
“Partnership is the new leadership,” said Martin Lundstedt, President and CEO of the Volvo Group, during a keynote at CES.
Sustainability was another key talking point as companies made commitments to their environmental impact at the show through a focus on renewable energy Panasonic has a plan be net zero CO2 emissions across all of its operations, including all manufacturing facilities worldwide by 2030. Volvo plans to cut average per car emissions by 65-75% by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2040. Delta has plans to be at zero emissions by 2050.
“We can only imagine how exciting the world must have seemed a century ago. Could you imagine the very concept of powered flight was only a few years old? But this brand new technology it carried the promise of changing the world, traversing the skies at high speed created opportunities that would have been possible in the days of rail and ships,” said Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, during a CES keynote at The Sphere (the first ever at the location).
“It brought people and communities together as never before in human history and it feels similar today,” he continued. “New marvels like AI, the digital revolution and innovations in sustainability are giving us incredible tools to transform the travel experience. But amid the wonder of new technology, we’ve always understood that the entire point of innovation is to lift people up.”
