You can't shake a stick at this year's CES without hitting an AI gadget. Artificial smarts are embedded in nearly every wearable, screen, and appliance on the show floor, not to mention an army of AI companions, toys, and robots.
But those are just the beginning. We've seen AI pop up in far weirder places, from hair clippers to stick vacuums. In at least one case, even the manufacturer itself didn't seem to know why their product was “AI.”
Here are the gadgets we've seen so far at CES 2026 that actually take the “intelligence” out of “artificial intelligence.”
Glyde smart clipper
This is a ridiculous enough product without it AI add-ons. These smart hair clippers help amateur hairdressers achieve the perfect fade by dynamically changing the closeness of the cut with the help of a spooky face mask like the ones you find in opticians.
But it's taken to the next level with a real-time AI coach that gives you feedback while you cut. Glide is also working on voice control of the AI, which he said will eventually be able to recommend certain hairstyles as long as you trust its style advice. you?
“Where pills and AI meet”
That was the message posted at the SleepQ booth. There, company representatives were handing out boxes of pills. According to the box, it's a multivitamin with ashwagandha extract that is said to be good for sleep, but I was jet-lagged and didn't have the courage to test that claim.
Manufacturer Welt, originally founded as a spin-off from Samsung Incubator, calls its product “AI-upgraded drug therapy.” It really just uses biometric data from smartwatches and sleep trackers to tell you the best time to take your sleeping pills each day, and will eventually cover anxiety medications, weight management medications, pain medications, and more.
While some might argue that tweaking the time people take their medications could make them even more effective, I think it's safe to say we don't need to start using the term “AI-enhanced drugs.”
Startup Deglace claims that its almost unnecessarily sophisticated-looking Fraction vacuum cleaner uses AI in two different ways. The first is “optimizing suction power'' and the second is managing repair and replacement of the modular design.
The company says its Neural Predictive AI monitors your vacuum's performance and “detects problems before they occur,” providing a health score for each component in your vacuum and making it easy to replace by easily ordering parts through the included app. Cynics may worry that this is being done in the name of selling expensive, proprietary replacement parts to users, but at least the promise of modular upgrades is tenable – if Deglace can deliver on that promise.
Most digital photo frames can display photos of loved ones, old holiday snaps, or favorite pieces of art. Fraimic allows you to view AI slops.
It's an E Ink picture frame with a microphone and voice control so you can write any image you want, and the frame generates it using OpenAI's GPT Image 1.5 model. The frames themselves start at $399 and can produce 100 images each year, but you can also buy more if you run out.
What makes Fraimic's AI so questionable is that it could be a very good product without it. E Ink panels look great, can be used to show off your photos and photos, and consume very little power so they can last for a long time. year I would have liked it more if it wasn't for the extra slop.
Infinix, a small cell phone manufacturer that has found success across Asia with its affordable phones, didn't announce any actual new products at CES this year, but it did announce five concepts that could fit into future phones. Some are clever, like different color-changing back finishes and some water-cooling designs. And then there's AI ModuVerse.
The concept of modular phones is not new, so in theory the AI hook is what makes ModuVerse unique. “Modus” one makes sense. A conferencing attachment that connects magnetically, generates an AI transcript, and displays live translation on a mini display on the back.
But when you ask what made it all? Other than that AI, Infinix didn't have a very good answer. The gimbal camera has AI stabilization, the vlog lens uses AI to detect your face, the microphone has AI audio separation, and while technically it's all AI-based, it's nothing interesting. As for the magnetic stackable power bank, Infinix officials finally admitted that it doesn't actually have any AI on board. I was shocked.
AI and robotic cooking hardware trends are on the rise – The VergeJen Toohey reviewed a $1,500 robot chef just last month, but the Wan AIChef is a completely unimpressive AI-enabled microwave.
It runs on something suspiciously similar to Android, displays recipe suggestions and cooking instructions, and has a camera inside so you can see your progress as you create. But…it's just a microwave. This means that you can't actually cook the food other than heating it to just the right temperature (plus or minus 3 degrees Celsius to be exact).
It also does meal planning, food tracking, and calorie counting. I think this is all great, as long as you agree to eat all your meals in the AI microwave. Please, please don't eat the whole thing out of the AI microwave.
The technology industry is absolutely really like When it comes to reinventing vending machines and branding them as either robots or AI, AI Barmen is no different.
This setup is apparently already being used at private parties and corporate events, but it's actually just an automatic cocktail machine with some AI smarts.
The AI uses your connected webcam to estimate your age (in my case there was an 8-year difference) and make sure you're sober enough to have another drink. You can also create custom drinks, but with mixed success. When asked for “something to drive me crazy,” I came up with the Funky Tequila Fizz (aka tequila, triple sec, and soda). What, no absinthe?
Photo: Dominic Preston/The Verge
Should you buy your child an AI toy that can talk to a full LLM-powered chatbot? Probably not. But what if that AI chatbot looks like little Elon Musk?
He's just one of the many avatars Luka AI Cube offers, including Hayao Miyazaki and Steve from the movies. minecraftHarry Potter. Kids can chat about their day, ask for advice, and even share AI Cube's camera feed to show the AI avatar where they are and what they're doing. Luca says it's not only fun, but also a tool for learning with a variety of educational activities and language options.
The question is whether you should trust any company's guardrails enough to allow young children access to an LLM. Leading Elon Musk in terms of AI (his AI, Grok, is busy undressing children as we speak) doesn't necessarily inspire confidence.
