The process of ordering a cab, playing music on Spotify, watching a video or ordering takeout probably involves unlocking your phone, opening an app and scrolling to the desired result. During CES 2024, tech giants and startups alike provided a glimpse at how that might change. They envision a future in which you can book an entire vacation using your voice or video chat on a screen that’s almost as large as a window in your home.Â
From putting voice assistants fueled by the tech behind ChatGPT in your pocket and car to mixed reality headsets that position virtual screens all around you, CES 2024 was full of ideas about how apps as we currently know them could evolve.
Read more: Biggest Trends of CES 2024: AI, Transparent Screens and Off-Grid Tech to Power Your Home
It’s an ambition that’s been in motion for the better part of the last decade following the debut of voice-first gadgets like the Amazon Echo and early modern VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift. There’s renewed interest around these ideas heading into 2024, thanks to the boom in generative AI-powered assistants like ChatGPT and Apple’s entry into the mixed reality market. That sentiment was on full display during CES.Â
Smarter voice assistants that can do more
Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant have existed for years, and ChatGPT has been part of the cultural zeitgeist since it arrived in November 2022. At CES 2024, we saw new ways in which large language models — or AI models that have been trained on large amounts of data to better understand natural language — are being implemented into hardware. These advancements, should they live up to their promises, could potentially eliminate or reduce the need to use traditional apps as often.
The Rabbit R1 is the biggest example of this. This tiny, orange box-shaped device is about half the size of your smartphone, and its 2.88-inch display is considered miniscule by today’s…
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