To Invade Homes, Tech Is Trying to Get in Your Kitchen
Household brands like Whirlpool, Samsung and Bosch are racing against tech behemoths like Google and Amazon to dominate the kitchen with internet-connected appliances and cooking gadgets
that include refrigerators embedded with touch screens, smart dishwashers and connected countertop screens with artificially intelligent assistants that react to spoken commands.
There’s going to be a lot of skepticism.”
Apart from their fears of disrupting the rhythms and patterns in the heart of the home, people may be hesitant to incorporate smart devices into their kitchens
because of the costs of maintaining such appliances, which are often difficult to repair and use expensive components like touch screens.
Many people use Amazon’s Echo speaker or Google Home, both of which are embedded with the
companies’ smart virtual assistants, for setting kitchen timers or looking up recipes
“We’d really like consumers, at some point of time, to look back
and say, ‘These days, a refrigerator without a screen feels awkward,’” said Sunggy Koo, Samsung’s vice president for smart appliances.
Security researchers said that one problem with smart appliances is that, unlike tech companies,
household brands lack the cybersecurity expertise to vet products for vulnerabilities.
“Will we see a reinvention of the kitchen like we saw in the living room?” said Michael
Wolf, a tech analyst who hosts a podcast and a conference about the smart kitchen.
