How AI is Making Electronics Smarter, Safer, and More Personal

The electronics appliances sector stands at an inflexion point, especially with rapid releases of several new-age technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and more. As AI becomes one of the driving forces of development across sectors, it has impacted the electronics industry significantly, transforming user preferences and requirements unlike anything the world has seen. This has led electronics brands to focus on making them smarter, safer and more customisable to the unique needs of users, leading the sector to a watershed moment where projections suggest unprecedented scalability and growth.

While AI remains the protagonist behind this massive shift, it is important to understand why the transformation is taking place. To begin with, electronics appliance sales have significantly been motivated by what users require at any given point in time from a historical perspective. When the first consumer durables were introduced to the market, the objective was to simply reduce manual functionalities like washing clothes, or dishes or preserving food via low temperatures. While these basic functionalities were met in the first wave of development, then came more unique and complex requirements. How would the world address air pollution at home, how would windows be cleaned at skyscrapers, or how would individuals enjoy the latest flicks with a theatre-like experience in the comfort of their homes? While the ideas existed beforehand, the innovation part of the development came later — through AI, and now the focus has shifted to making electronics products, irrespective of functionalities, smarter, safer and more personal than ever.

Why AI is becoming indispensable

If we look deeper, why this transformation is taking place becomes clearer easily. What remains the trickier part is the how, as in what practices or technological aspects are being integrated via AI to make electronics products smarter, safer and more personal.

To understand the same, we must first revisit how the user requirements have shifted over the years to the current state. At present, what users are looking for from electronic appliances is beyond their basic functionalities. Aspects like efficiency, performance, and energy efficiency have taken over the front seat. With AI’s extensive capability of enhancing these aspects, it is being considered the prime enabler of electronics development in the 21st century.

AI is integrating the aspect of proactive performance in devices. For example, let’s take a mouse, a computer peripheral product, which is primarily used for clicks, and scrolling. However, an AI-integrated mouse is now inherently intelligent, capable of aspects like voice typing, translations, OCR scanning and access to AI tools. The functionality of an AI-integrated mouse goes well beyond the preconceived notion of clicks and scrolls, as these products are also capable of taking meeting notes, drafting content, reports, business proposals, image generation, proofreading and many more complex operations. This intelligent aspect integrates a customisable feature for users, enhancing productivity and efficiency much higher than previously thought possible.

Let’s take another example. How does a smart air purifier help users and cater to their requirements? Efficiently, as it turns out. With the help of emerging technologies like AI and ML, air purifiers are now capable of detecting a sudden spike of polluting factors like bacteria, PM2.5 particles or others, and as a response go into action mode automatically. Traditional air purifiers, having a 3-stage, or 4-stage purification process with HEPA, activated carbon or pre-filters tend to fall short in front of AI-integrated air purifiers, since the AI models are trained to understand the persisting air pollution and act automatically. Smart AI purifiers address the sudden increase in pollution by changing its performance mode that saves energy, to recommended levels of performance that mitigate the pollutants — all without any manual intervention. This aspect helps to promote the safety aspect, highlighting the importance of AI in electronics products.

Customisation key for future scalability

While the impact of AI on electronic products is quickly becoming an undisputed aspect, its importance goes well beyond the immediate effects. As customer priority changes, the industry is aligning quickly with the same to stay relevant. Brands not complying with it would soon find themselves in crisis, as AI has been bolstering its position as one of the catalysts for future scalability. Since it is not possible to roll out different products for diverse requirements, the ability to customize any given product based on customer requirements will be the key going forward. This is where AI will have a significant impact, helping to turn product performance to suit that of individual users.

With AI, electronics products are being made to offer tailor-made solutions. It is helping to integrate cost and energy-efficient performance, long-term viability through automated performance decisions and absolute safety. As a result, the devices that are being created are not only more personal, but their intelligence aspect helps to cater to different requirements at the same time for different user requirements. This is bringing the best out of agentic AI as well, creating an extensive case study of how the simultaneous evolution of AI and consumer electronics products is taking place. With the focal points already in consideration, electronics products are bringing in technological supremacy in contrast to what was previously perceived as possible swiftly.

Furthermore, the rapid integration of AI to improve customization aspects of electronics products also highlights the growing emphasis on staying competitive and introducing premium products to the market. With more emphasis being exercised on making appliances smarter, safer and more personal, the onus has been delivered to brands and securing scalability aspects will become of paramount importance.

Expected trajectory

In the coming years, AI integration in electronics products is projected to amplify irrespective of functionalities. The ongoing transformation to making electronics products smarter, safer and more personal has gone well beyond basic consumer durables, and the same is expected to continue in the coming years. However, it is expected to become a multi-layered approach instead, with a particular focus on making products smarter, safer and increasingly customisable. Since AI development itself remains at a very nascent stage, the general development aspects in regard to AI integration are expected to continue simultaneously with it, and much more innovation can be expected down the line.

Author: Prashant Bora, MD & CEO of OTEK (A Bora Multicorp Venture)