Back in 1970 there was a futurist named Alvin Toffler who wrote the book Future Shock. The idea of his book was that society is going through a dramatic series of changes that are happening so quickly that it can be too much for us to handle. In 2013, Douglas Rushkoff updated this as an idea with his book Present Shock. He argued that society is moving so quickly that we are all in a state of continued anxiety.
It’s hard to not feel that idea of “present shock” right now with even our kitchen refrigerator under threat from being controlled by AI.
This past week in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was held. It’s where all the major electronics companies show off their new products and make announcements about all of the “cool” appliances they’re planning to launch. At the 2025 CES there was no shortage of fridge and freezers being shown off and they were all there with built-in AI.
I thought the future was a fridge with a TV screen built-in?
We were all amused by the idea of fridges being sold with an iPad-like screen built into the side of it. These have been around now for over a decade and, lets be real, they haven’t really become a mainstream thing. You can still buy fridges with a screen, but they tend to still be higher-end fridges. Broadly, the public hasn’t been sold a compelling reason why our fridge also needs to have a screen.
When screens were first released, the functionality was pretty limited to shopping lists and other fairly limited features. But even a decade or so later, most of the features seem to be solutions to a problem most of us don’t have. The fridges will let you browse the internet on it, make shopping lists, stream Spotify (thanks to built-in speakers), access a shared calendar, get weather updates, and make hands-free phone calls. That all sounds fine, but these are also functions available on the phone in our pockets.
We don’t need a fancy screen on our fridge to replicate the many devices in the modern home that does that.
Looking at the Harvey Norman website, the cheapest standard-sized fridge on sale is a 179-litre Hisense fridge at $179. That’s certainly on the very cheap end of what most of us would be spending on our standard kitchen fridge – most of us are spending between $1100-1800 on fridges that are around 450-litres in volume. The cheapest fridge/freezer you will find with a screen integrated into it is the Samsung 616-litre ‘Family Hub Side By Side Refrigerator’ at $2999.
The Sorted Food YouTube channel has this review of a 2024 Samsung smart fridge (it isn’t clear whether this is the same Samsung fridge mentioned above). At the 3:17 mark on the video, you can see them talking about the one really useful function that is unique to a fridge experience – adding the contents of the fridge to the smart screen. There’s also a built-in camera to show you what is in the fridge from the screen.
This means your fridge can tell you what is in your fridge without having to open it and, crucially, what the expiration date is on the food. That’s really cool and gives a real purpose to a fridge screen.
The real flaw in the technology is what the guys quickly identify. Most food items need to be added manually. Because the fridge is a smart device that can also connect to the Internet, the function is there to use your phone to scan meat labels before putting them in the fridge – the labels then source information including use by dates from the cloud. But the guys in the video can’t make that function work.
It also doesn’t help much if you are just buying meat from your local butcher who may not use labels. Or other similar products.
This is actually where AI may be able to be useful.
The rise of the AI-powered smart fridge
At CES 2025, it seemed as if every technology company was selling a product that is now powered by AI. For a lot of products, it was the equivalent of selling the same products they have always sold, only now with a clock in it.
But there are quite a number of products that are being improved with AI and the previously-mentioned Samsung smart fridges are a really good example.
Where the fridges above showed the promise of the future by being able to alert users to expiring food, they needed to be manually updated in the system. Putting away groceries (and throwing out older, rotting fruit & veg) is an annoying job to be done generally – adding an extra 30 minutes to catalogue all of your new food items is something new fridge owners may do a couple of times, but pretty quickly it’ll just become a feature no one uses.
Samsung’s AI Family Hub fridges promises that its ‘AI Vision’ uses an internal camera to identify up to 33 fresh food items. The screen will also show you food in the door bins, manage food according to use-by dates, and offer recipe suggestions based on the food in your fridge. That may not help those living the bachelor lifestyle with just a handful of items in the fridge, but for those with partners and families, that has appeal.
These fridges are already available in stores, but you are paying a premium for the cutting-edge technology. It may cost $2999 to put a screen on your fridge, but to really make it useful with the AI integration, the 636-litre AI Family Hub fridge is priced at $4699.
At CES, Samsung also unveiled new fridges set to be launched later this year around the world that offer ‘AI Hybrid Cooling technology.’ It uses AI to identify temperature changes in a fridge. For example, if you put a dish in the fridge with a still-cooling plate of chicken, the fridge will compensate accordingly to give all the food in the fridge the optimum temperature needed.
According to Samsung, tests show that “when the Hybrid Precise Cooling is turned on, fresh foods such as pork and salmon can last by up to 1.4 times and 1.2 times respectively, compared to when it is turned off.”
But do you need AI in your fridge?
Ask yourself this: Have you gotten by without AI in your fridge? Most of us have been refrigerating our food just fine for all of our lives with regular human intelligence powering our decision making.
That said, if you have the money to spend and you’re after a fancy fridge that actually offers some really impressive, useful features, by all means go for it. The AI integration is finally delivering on the promise of the smart fridge and making those screens finally worthwhile.
But it does come with quite a price hike. Many of us will still be happy with our simple fridges and freezers with technology no more advanced than having a light that comes on when we open the door.