Lyu Jae-cheol, president of LG Electronics' Home Appliance & Air Solution division, speaks during a press conference at a hotel in Berlin, Thursday (local time). Courtesy of LG Electronics
BERLIN — LG Electronics' home appliance division head said Thursday (local time) that the company will roll out its AI home hub, LG ThinQ ON, within this year, taking a step toward realizing a zero-labor home controlled by an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered hub.
“LG Electronics will enable consumers to experience our AI home solution, centered by LG ThinQ ON, within this year,” said Lyu Jae-cheol, president of LG Electronics' Home Appliance & Air Solution Division, during a press conference at a hotel in Berlin. LG is participating the IFA 2024 consumer exhibition in the city.
“All you have to do is communicate with the generative AI like you do with your friends or family. The AI will do the rest, managing home appliances, providing life services and caring for the customers to their optimal status… LG Electronics' AI home will be an important milestone in our journey for liberating people from household chores and improving their quality of life.”
ThinQ ON is a smart speaker embedded with LG's own developed generative AI agent, Furon, which is powered by the GPT-4o large language model (LMM). It understands users' natural language and serves as the control tower for electronic appliances in the home.
LG said Furon learns from the user's lifestyle and provides personalized space solutions. For example, if the user says, “I was able to concentrate very well last week, so set the environment up the same way,” traditional LMM technology will use preferences for lighting, temperature and other environmental factors favored by the user. Furon specifically remembers and recreates the exact conditions the user prefers.
“In the case of conventional smart homes, when you feel this room is too warm, you have to say ‘Hi LG, set the air conditioners' temperature to 26 degrees Celsius,' meaning you have to control the device within the range of predetermined voice commands including air conditioner and temperature,” Lyu said.
“However, in the AI home, when you say, ‘Hi LG, it's too hot in this room,' Furon will autonomously assess the situation, recognizing that ‘too hot' likely means the air conditioning needs to be turned on. The system understands the context through natural language, then automatically controls appliances and IoT devices based on its judgment, and takes action accordingly.”
Lyu also stressed that ThinQ ON is able to control conventional appliances which are not yet compatible with AI. When connected with ThinQ ON and separate sensors that LG will sell on the market soon, older models can be controlled by ThinQ ON, as long as they have wi-fi functions or are remote controlled.
Lyu Jae-cheol, president of LG Electronics' Home Appliance & Air Solution division introduces ThinQ ON displayed at the company's booth at the IFA 2024 in Berlin in this undated handout photo. Courtesy of LG Electronics
LG said such a feature will help consumers to set up an AI home without buying new appliances, but at the same time noted that this may not be helpful for the company's earnings in the short-term.
“Of course we'd like to sell new appliances and improve our revenue by spinning the appliance replacing cycle faster,” Lyu said. “However, from the perspective of customers and society as a whole, we thought that it would be right to upgrade old appliances to AI compatible ones. In the short term, focusing on selling new products might be more profitable, but in the long run, considering the trust people have in the LG brand, this seems like the better approach.”
LG said it will roll out eight peripherals that can be connected to ThinQ ON, such as motion and air quality sensors, smart buttons, smart switches and controllers, within this year.
The company's AI home campaign came amid an intensifying competition between global home appliance makers to take an early lead in the lucrative market.
According to Statista, the number of households having smart appliances that can be connected stood at 190 million in 2019 but quickly grew to 360 million last year. Market tracker TechNavio assumes that the global smart home market will grow an average 26.23 percent annually to stand at $260 billion by 2028.
At the ongoing IFA 2024, Chinese electronics giants showcased their growing influence in the global home appliance market, unveiling AI-powered TVs, washers, dryers and other flagship products. This increasing presence poses a significant challenge to established industry leaders such as LG, Siemens, Philips, Samsung and a number of Japanese companies.
“We want to be the leading player in the global AI home market,” Lyu said. “We all know that Chinese brands are no longer relies on price competitiveness, and they are leading ahead of us in several segments… Instead of contemplating our responses to them, we will focus on how our AI home can deliver greater values to customers.”