Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
- Step 1: Add AI to everything
- Step 2: …
- Step 3: Profit!
Several years ago, The Blackout Crew had a hit with a song that urged us to “put a bunch“. And now LG and Samsung they do something similar, but instead of a song it’s a TV, and the donk is AI.
Both Samsung and LG are apparently leaning heavily on AI to sell you a new TV this year, and they’re both doing it with Microsoft‘s Copilot, and also with its AI features.
AI is not new to TVs: it has become a catch-all term for intelligent systems that take care of things like audio and video upsampling. And the AI in the two companies’ 2025 TVs seems to come in two flavors: things that could improve your TV experience, and an AI app that could only tell you about put the glue on the pizza (AI Overviews, we look at you here).
What will LG and Samsung do with AI in their 2025 TVs?
Samsung calls its AI features Samsung Vision AI, and this year it comes to TVs including the Neo QLED, OLEDQLED and The Frame models. The goal, says Samsung, is to make TVs aware of their surroundings, adapted to user preferences and “autonomous in providing intuitive functions.”
In practice, this means a better integration with SmartThings plus three key functions: Live Translate, for translating subtitles in real time; AI generated wallpaper; and Click To Search to tell more about who or what is on the screen. And as before, it means dynamically optimized visuals based on what you’re looking at and how much light there is in the room where you’re looking at it.
As for Copilot, Samsung says it will “allow users to explore a wide range of Copilot services, including personalized content recommendations.” There are no more details for the moment, which suggests that it is still a little far from becoming a central part of the smart TV configuration.
LG also going down the AI-powered personalization route. In addition to using algorithms to sample low-resolution and lower-quality visuals, there is AI-powered surround sound and a new name for the remote control: it is now the AI Remote.
LG says your TV will greet you by name, provide tailored recommendations and detect different voices and adjust on-screen suggestions accordingly. There is AI Search, an AI Chatbot help system and once again, generative images and Copilot query.
It’s easy to be cynical about the current AI hype – do we really want to burn the planet faster to make more images of people with six fingers? – and the prefix AI in technological marketing is starting to feel a bit like “cyber” or prefix “i” did in the bad times. But the upsampling and optimization of audio and video AI has become really good; I think it would be a shame if the more gimmicky stuff distracts from the really useful things that AI and machine learning can do for TVs in terms of actually improving what you see and hear.
