CES 2024: LG's New Smart Home Hub Is a Cute Little Robot

Look out, Rosey the robot: Your days are numbered.

I already have a dog, but what I want patrolling the grounds instead is LG’s new smart home AI agent, just announced at CES. (No offense, pup.) A damn near physical manifestation of every cartoon robot ever, this two-wheeling bot is here to have complex conversations with you and manage your home. Whenever it eventually hits the market, of course.

A robot that takes in its surroundings

LG says the bot, which it's calling an "AI agent," can navigate homes autonomously. A welcome development if true, considering the storied history of robot vacuums failing to navigate a threshold or a rug. It will also monitor your pets and report when there’s a problem in the home, such as lights being left on, a window left open, or any unexpected noise or movement.

Really, the bot shares many core functions with existing smart home hubs, including integrations to control other smart home devices. Additionally, the robot uses face and user recognition, layered on top of all kinds of sensors constantly reading temperature, air quality, and humidity. The idea is that it can monitor your home, conserve energy by monitoring what’s in use, greeting you when you get home, and playing music that might meet your mood once it analyzes your voice and facial expressions—though it remains to be seen how well that may work in practice.

If I sound skeptical, let me be clear, I want a robot. I suspect like most first iterations, this one will have a few bumps to iron out, but we're clearly now far, far past the robotic dogs doing back flips at shopping malls. (Surely it will have a cuter name by the time it hits the market, because “AI agent” does give off some insidious-robot-overlord energy.)

Turning a hub into a physical presence in the home

This robot is the latest manifestation of LG’s smart home schtick, a concept called the “Zero Labor Home,” in which much of the daily grind and overhead of maintaining a home is outsourced to AI and tech. While other brands like Google and Apple have relied on voice assistant hubs, LG’s insistence on the physical presence of a robot could be a game changer.

On the one hand, I just watched A Murder At the End of the World and the message was, essentially, “AI bad.” On the other hand, the LG washer and dryer I’m currently testing make laundry delightfully hands off. Until further notice, I’ll happily take the robots.