Samsung is going all in on AI in its latest kitchen appliances, but the SmartThings app is the connecting thread. The tech giant announced a slew of new smart appliances designed to work together and help you through the planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning phases of meal preparation. The Family Hub Fridge will be able to send recipe instructions to the AI Oven, which will then pass it on to the Bespoke Dishwasher that can create a custom cleaning cycle to suit the recipe.
The breadth of AI integration varies depending on the product but the Family Hub has the most robust features in the kitchen. Using a camera, the fridge can identify foods as you place them in and remove them, automatically creating a list of the ingredients in your fridge with approximate expiry dates. For the Family Hub to identify a food it needs to be within the Samsung catalogue, but Samsung couldn’t comment on how many foods are available within that at this time. During our hands-on the Hub reliably identified a range of loose fruits and vegetables, but notably identified someone’s hand as an egg so like any AI system it has some bugs to work out. Currently it won’t work with packaged foods, and uses the American vernacular, so you might end up with a bunch of aubergine rather than eggplant. In the meantime users can edit their fridge contents either on the fridge or through the SmartThings app.
Using the Samsung Food app you can then get recipes based on what you have in the fridge at any point in time. Despite the Americanisms you can pull recipes from anywhere on the web and it recognises the synonyms for the ingredients. These recipes can then be sent to the AI Oven which can set temperatures and cooking time based on the instructions.
While the Family Hub communicates with the oven, it has its own smarts as well. Equipped with an AI Pro Cooking Camera the oven can recognise certain foods, monitor them for ‘optimal browning’, and send an alert if any burning is detected. This is based on an AI created algorithm, and doesn’t use real time learning so you can’t rely on your oven for food safety protocols just yet. The camera is positioned so that the heat passes below the lens which Samsung claims should help to minimise condensation on the lens. Many oven features can be controlled remotely through the SmartThings app, such as monitoring the camera or turning the temperature up and down. As a safety precaution, you can only turn the device off and on when both your phone and the oven are connected to the same WiFi network. If you don’t have the Family Hub then the AI Oven can still automatically set temperature and timers but only based on the inbuilt Auto Cook menu.
The Flex Door Oven has two compartments allowing for dual cooking albeit at the same temperature. The top can be used for traditional baking while the bottom can be used for steaming at the same time when using the steaming tray.
Once the cooking is done, the Bespoke Dishwasher can identify just how soiled the dishes may be and identify a washing cycle based on that. As a standalone device additional functionality is available through the SmartThings app including specialist programs such as Plastic, or Baby Care cycles.
While AI is certainly used by the individual devices throughout the process, the Samsung Smart Things app is the bridge. Using the app enables voice control through Bixby for various appliances, grants access to the extensive Samsung Food library, and allows for control across thousands of smart home devices within the ecosystem. Every device will recieve security updates and patches for the length of the warranty period, but support after that time is not yet guaranteed. Notably all Samsung's latest smart devices use the Matter standard.
Alongside these products Samsung also announced the Bespoke Rangehood, and Induction Cooktops in the kitchen, the Bespoke Jet AI vacuum cleaner, Bespoke Jet Bot AI+ robovac, and a dual Hydro Pump washer and dryer rated up to 18kg.
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