The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) kicks off at the start of each year and looks at the future of technology and the tech industry, showcasing what could soon become a part of our lives in the next couple of years. But what trends shaped this year’s event? And was it just everything AI?
Yup, there’s AI, AI everywhere!
2024 saw the AI boom hit mainstream with many big tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Google competing with their own AI offerings and baking them into their latest devices and applications.
At CES 2025 we’ve seen this expand even further with all manner of tech (and even non-tech) having AI as the unique selling point. One of the major announcements in the AI field was NVIDIA unveiling their $3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Project Digits. The supercomputer is set to launch in May and is capable of running high-powered AI processes and can be plugged into a standard wall outlet.
That wasn’t all from NVIDIA when it comes to AI – they also announced that they’ll launch their G-Assist AI assistant in February, and their NVIDIA ACE characters, which were previously in-game chat bots, and will now be taking things a step further with PUBG Ally, an NPC companion within PUBG intended to help players win the game.
Other AI announcements included products like Philips Hue’s AI assistant, a bunch of gaming laptops with AI built-in, and then there’s the $400 Brisk It smart grill – yep, a barbeque powered by AI.
With artificial intelligence being the biggest buzz word of this decade, it’s no surprise that AI was front and center at CES this year.
Virtual and Augmented reality innovations
With Apple’s Vision Pro giving us an idea of what the future could look like when it comes to virtual and augmented reality, the future of this technology could see a much wider adoption beyond just gaming and entertainment.
CES did see a handful of innovations within the mixed-reality space from Socialdream’s therapeutic virtual-reality headset designed for Autism and Alzheimer’s patients, to XREAL’s stylish augmented-reality glasses that wouldn’t look out of place in a spy movie.
Innovation in this field is seeing more and more practical applications from virtual work meetings, tourism, and education. One of the ways this is happening that we saw at CES is with a collaboration between Sony and Siemens who have partnered to bring a new solution for immersive engineering.
Utilising Siemens NX software for project engineering and Sony’s head-mounted display, this partnership will bring the power of mixed reality to the product engineering and manufacturing community.
Speaking of Sony, the company also unveiled their Xyn “extended reality” prototype which is intended to help develop 3D games and movies.
Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality is definitely here to stay, though I’m not expect us to be entering the world of Ready Player One any time soon.
Gaming takes center stage
Gaming had an absolutely huge presence at CES this year with NVIDIA filling up an entire arena for their smorgasbord of announcements. In addition to their move into the AI world, as expected they had plenty of hardware announcements, too.
The biggest trend we saw out of CES 2025, at least in the gaming space, was portability. There were announcements from almost all of the big names in the PC hardware space, each unveiling their next-generation gaming laptops. While there were a few desktop PC hardware announcements, the focus did seem to be on portability.
This has been echoed elsewhere as we’re seeing even more handheld PC gaming devices being unveiled following the success of the SteamDeck, Lenovo’s Legion Go, and the ASUS ROG Ally. Both Acer and Intel were among those unveiling their own gaming handheld PCs, both of which had a whopping 11-inch screen, though Intel’s boasted a Nintendo 3DS-like autostereoscopic screen.
As chip manufacturers cram even more power into much smaller form factors, it’s no surprise we’re seeing high-end gaming capabilities in much smaller packages, and CES 2025 certainly proved that this may be the future of video gaming.
Plenty of screen time at CES
As always, CES is the hub of all things display-related, whether it’s the latest gaming display with digital TV built in, or massive 136” displays powered by MicroLED technology. As almost every aspect of our lives involves some sort of screen, it doesn’t surprise us to see manufacturers showing off their latest in display technology.
One trend we’re seeing is manufacturers baking in additional services into their displays, such as the HP gaming monitor which comes with Google TV letting users go from gaming to watching Netflix in an instant. We also saw TiVo announce TiVo-powered TVs, with an upcoming Sharp TV powered by TiVo OS coming to the US later this year after a successful launch in Europe.
We also saw some weird and wonderful displays, most notably from LG with their LG StandbyME 2, an updated version of their display which can be used for many things including a digital POS, notice board, or with its new shoulder strap, a walking A-board. Speaking of LG, they also unveiled their completely transparent TV.
Of course, we had plenty of displays with AI built-in too.
Smart homes and the Internet of Things is still well and truly alive
This is kind of cheating because IoT and smart home gear always makes a splash at CES and this year was no different.
Of course, the main big trend within the IoT and smart home space was… you guessed it, AI. Many of the manufacturers had some sort of AI feature to show, whether it was AI-powered motion sensors, smart mirrors that discuss your health with you, or utilising AI to detect whether someone has taken a fall.
While many of these devices work with assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home, being able to process and understand information without a third-party device is where smart home tech really shines.
Are we stepping ever closer to the world envisioned in 2001 – A Space Odyssey? A little.
AI-powered innovation
Although CES is home to hundreds of innovations in tech across hundreds of different industries, the main overarching buzz was, of course, Artificial Intelligence. Even CES themselves put AI at the forefront of the show this year.
Does this suggest that the future of technology will be entirely AI-based. In a way, yes. But it’s not without its pushback as governments are starting to look at both generative AI and other AI technologies from a security perspective and are currently looking into ways to regulate this tech – hopefully to stop AI from fully taking over every aspect of our lives.