At a Glance
- AI was slapped on toothbrushes, cat feeders, mirrors and coffee makers with no real benefit
- Health-tech demos quietly used AI to spot brain patterns and speed non-invasive surgery
- Excess branding turned “AI” into meaningless noise by day three of the Las Vegas show
- Why it matters: Hype buries genuine breakthroughs that could actually improve lives
The gadget parade at CES 2026 felt like a drinking game: take a shot every time a founder says “AI-powered.” By the third morning the word had lost all meaning, drowned in a sea of toothbrushes, cat feeders and massage chairs that brag about large-language models yet solve nothing.
Olivia M. Hartwell, covering her first CES for News Of Losangeles, landed in Las Vegas ready for sensory overload. She left overwhelmed by linguistic waste. “On Day 1 I started keeping a list in my notes app-not of companies to follow up with, but of products that had been given the AI treatment for no discernible reason,” she wrote.
The List That Kept Growing
Her tally exploded within hours:
- AI toothbrush
- AI sleep mask
- AI baby monitor
- AI coffee maker
- AI cat feeder
- AI pen
- AI pin
- AI massage chair
- AI mirror that “reads your face”
- AI refrigerator that “needs to know me better than I know myself”
- AI smart ring, necklace, headphones-“AI oh my god whatever”
Some items worked fine, a few impressed (the massage chair earned praise), yet most served as marketing glitter. “Too often, AI isn’t solving a real problem. It’s simply a marketing strategy,” Olivia M. Hartwell noted.
Buzzword Fatigue Sets In
By the third day every pitch blurred into the same chorus: AI-powered, AI-driven, AI-enabled. “Most of them? AI nonsense,” she wrote. The repetition triggered oscillation between fascination at the ambition and fatigue at the emptiness. “That future looked like a nonsense solution in search of a nonexistent problem, all wrapped up in an LLM.”
The issue wasn’t the technology itself but its casual, liberal application. When everything carries an AI sticker, nothing feels innovative. The term becomes a checkbox, a mandate, an expectation-then the fatigue sets in.
The Real Breakthrough Wasn’t Branded
The epiphany arrived not on the show floor but in side rooms devoted to health and medical research. Here AI stayed out of the headline, acting instead as quiet infrastructure. Neurology teams explained how algorithms surface patterns too complex for human cognition to spot quickly, helping analyze brain signals, guide non-invasive therapies and speed surgical planning.
“These are the breakthroughs that actually focus on helping us live better ones,” Olivia M. Hartwell wrote. “Humanity, human consequence and human lives are at the forefront of these innovations.”
Humanity Outshines the Hype
The most remarkable technology of the week turned out to be stubbornly human: coworkers meeting in person for the first time, journalists packed shoulder-to-shoulder in ballrooms, shared cab rides across Vegas. “The most compelling technology I saw at CES was… the technology that would allow us to connect more easily, live a little better and concentrate on humanity,” she concluded.
CES did not make her more cynical-she already thought most AI claims were hollow-but it sharpened her impatience for the buzzword to lose its unnecessary ubiquity. “The unnecessary AI now crowds out the purposes that matter,” she wrote. She’ll be waiting for more products that lead with purpose, not initials.
Key Takeaways
- AI slapped on everyday gadgets creates noise, not value
- Medical researchers quietly use AI for life-saving pattern detection
- Human connection, not algorithms, provided the week’s standout moments
- Hype risks burying the few tools that genuinely help people
