Samsung's Adorable AI Home Robot Packing Google's Smarts Launches This Summer

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Summary

Samsung is launching its “Ballie” home AI companion robot this summer in the US and Korea, developed in collaboration with Google and powered by Gemini AI and Samsung’s own models.
Ballie will offer personalized home assistance, including adjusting lighting, managing schedules, greeting visitors, and providing styling and health advice by understanding audio and visual inputs.
Beyond basic smart home functions, previous demonstrations suggest Ballie may also offer features like home patrolling, pet monitoring, and a front-facing projector, though detailed specifications are yet to be released.

Samsung is working on a new “home AI companion robot” that isn’t just all hype and vaporware — it is slated to launch this summer.

Ballie [ball-e], according to Samsung, was developed alongside Google, allowing the AI companion robot to fulfill tasks, provide home assistance, and interact in a personalized manner — all powered by Gemini and unnamed Samsung models.

First unveiled back in 2020, and subsequently showed off at CES earlier this year, the AI robot will be available for consumers in the US and Korea to buy this summer. Some of its capabilities will include adjusting lighting around the house, “greeting people at the door,” setting up and managing your schedule, setting reminds, and fulfilling other tasks that we’ve come to expect from a smart home device.

“By pairing Gemini’s powerful multimodal reasoning with Samsung’s AI capabilities in Ballie, we’re leveraging the power of open collaboration to unlock a new era of personalized AI companion — one that moves with users, anticipates their needs and interacts in more dynamic and meaningful ways than ever before,” said Yongjae Kim, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics, in a blog post announcing the availability.

An image of the Samsung Ballie on the floor looking at a person.

Source: Samsung

With Gemini’s multimodal capabilities, paired with Samsung’s proprietary language models, Ballie will be able to understand commands via audio and through visual data from its camera and sensors. Examples shared by the South Korean tech giant include asking the home AI companion robot for suggestions about what to wear to work. In this isntance, Ballie would be able to gather visual data about what you’re wearing, and give you styling recommendations accordingly. This could include suggestions about swapping out accessories or trying on a different colored garment.

Apart from regular smart home controls, Ballie would also be able to give you health-related advice, likely sourced directly from Gemini. For example, if you tell the robot that you’re “feeling tired today,” it would be able to give you advice on how to improve energy levels.

There’s more

Although not explicitly mentioned in its blog post today, previous Ballie videos from Samsung have highlighted that the home AI companion robot will be able to “patrol” in your stead, check on pets when you’re away from home, and send you video clips of events accordingly. The smart home gadget will also reportedly feature a front-shooting projector used to project videos, meetings, or for greeting messages.

Other important specs like projector resolution, speakers, battery life, and whether the gadget will have a dedicated charging dock like your iRobot Roomba are currently unclear.

Samsung will likely detail the upcoming home AI robot at an upcoming event or via a detailed blog post. You can pre-register to receive upcoming Ballie updates here.