AI is coming to Vegas

Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. CES kicks off this week, and AI is likely to be either the biggest star or most annoying buzzword of [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Austin Carr]( Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. CES kicks off this week, and AI is likely to be either the biggest star or most annoying buzzword of the gadget showcase. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Microsoft selected its [OpenAI board observer]( • Huawei’s PC chip was [made in Taiwan, not China]( • A startup investment giant [closed its Europe office]( AI everywhere Even before CES began, the theme of the massive, annual electronics festival in Las Vegas had long been decided: artificial intelligence gadgets. With so much hype and money swirling around ChatGPT and its counterparts, it was inevitable that practically every device maker would jump on the AI bandwagon. As much as CES serves as a hub for the products of tomorrow, it also typically doubles as a preview of how tech giants and startups will market their wares in the coming year. And if early announcements are any indication, AI-branded products will become the new “smart” gadgets of 2024. In the lead up to the event, LG Electronics Inc. touted AI television sets. Samsung Electronics Co. will show off a vacuum bot that uses AI to detect stains and distinguish between hard floors and carpets. (The company is expected to separately [launch an AI phone]( later this month). One startup is set to debut an AI system for accelerating the ordering process at drive-thru restaurants. Intel Corp. is simply promising to talk about “AI everywhere.” These kinds of themes emerge every CES. In years past, there were [robots](, [internet-of-things hardware](, [virtual assistants]( and the [metaverse](. Many of them ended up as fads ([3D TVs](), forever-around-the-corner inventions ([self-driving cars]() or outright duds ([Quibi](, Apple’s [Newton](, the [Palm Pre](). There’s no doubt AI has become a legitimate selling point for software developers, but none of it so far requires people to go out and buy a new piece of hardware. Think about how many dishwashers and air conditioners and light bulbs are now labeled smart products when their primary smart feature is that they can connect to the internet. That was novel at CES a decade ago, but it quickly became a gimmick to promote goods at Best Buy. Computer manufacturers — infamous for pitching amorphous concepts like “all-in-ones” and “hybrids” and “ultrabooks” — have [lately started hawking]( the “AI PC.” Dell Technologies Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. are promising they’ll boost speeds and battery life for AI apps. With so much of the processing happening in the cloud, though, it’s hard to imagine customers racing to buy a laptop that’ll somehow make Google Bard faster. Microsoft Corp., meanwhile, will use CES to showcase a new AI button, the [first addition to the Windows keyboard layout since 1994](. Pressing it will activate the [Copilot bot](. Will this help Microsoft’s partners sell more PCs? Or more so help Microsoft sell its AI? The rush of AI products resembles the onslaught of [voice-powered hardware at CES]( a few years ago. Many companies tried to create their own voice-command systems, which were mostly bad. So they switched to Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa or Apple Inc.’s Siri. A similar dynamic could start to play out this week at CES. If having some form of AI in one’s device becomes table stakes, then it’s likely AI partnerships will be essential in setting products apart — perhaps one reason [why Humane Inc.]( has played up its access to OpenAI Inc.’s technology when the startup recently unveiled its Ai Pin. If any of the AI gadgets manage to land an analogous collaboration — say, for an exclusive Nvidia Corp. accelerator or an integration with one of the high-profile AI unicorns — they’ll probably be the real winners of the show. —[Austin Carr](mailto:acarr54@bloomberg.net) The big story A Twitch feature for clipping short videos has been used dozens of times to record [sexualized content involving children](, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. Child predators are a persistent problem for the Amazon-owned company. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV analysis]( of crypto ETF policy. Get fully charged Apple is off to its weakest start in the stock market since 2019 and [could lose the title of world’s most valuable company](. The worries appear to be dragging down other companies, such as Foxconn, which assembles the iPhone and said it [expects sales to fall](. Nintendo’s next Switch game console will have an unexpected twist, Saudi Arabia will go even bigger into gaming and [three other predictions for the video game industry in 2024](. The UK’s health service is looking into whether an unusual online campaign by Palantir [violated the terms of their contract](. 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