By
Debra KaufmanJanuary 9, 2025
Billed as a conversation among CMOs, this CES panel — moderated by Consumer Technology Association VP of Marketing & Communications Melissa Harrison — drilled down into how major brands and advertising technology companies are integrating artificial intelligence into their pipelines and organizations. They agreed that, although this is still at the beginning stage and requires experimentation, those who are frozen and have not yet started engaging with AI will quickly be at a learning curve disadvantage. Still, panelists emphasized that AI will not replace human creativity. Continue reading CES: How Brands and Marketers Are Integrating AI, Creativity
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Debra KaufmanJanuary 9, 2025
Brands Mastercard and MGM Resorts International, the Ad Council and advertising technology company XR Extreme Reach (XR) gathered for a CES panel discussion on how real-time AI metrics can help increase representation in ads, thus boosting greater marketing ROI and audience trust. It was moderated by The Female Quotient Chief Executive Shelley Zalis, whose company collaborated with XR to unveil, in October, the Representation Index (RX) to measure inclusivity in global advertising. XR’s SVP of Enterprise Solutions Kristin Wnuk was also there to describe her company’s work in the space. Continue reading CES: Utilizing Real-Time AI to Measure Representation in Ads
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Paula ParisiJanuary 9, 2025
Lenovo’s new laptops include the Yoga Slim 9i, on display this week at CES 2025. Its 14-inch PureSight Pro OLED screen is essentially bezel-free, with 98 percent screen-to-body ratio made possible by the world’s first camera-under-display technology in a laptop. “Hiding the camera under the display panel until it is needed means a pure, uninterrupted screen with no camera notch,” Lenovo claims. When the 32-megapixel camera is activated, the laptop deactivates the pixels where the camera lens is positioned behind the screen. To correct image distortion and lowlight issues, Lenovo is tapping technology provided by Israel-based Visionary.ai. Continue reading CES: Lenovo Yoga Laptops Include One with Invisible Camera
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Yves BergquistJanuary 9, 2025
In the never-ending smorgasbord of AI hype, “agents” represent practical and worthwhile potential. AI agents are autonomous AI programs that can understand some context and take action in that context. Agents can autonomously perform a task that involves mapping a goal to its context and parameters (even if they’re not explicitly laid out), process data across multiple formats and ontologies to understand the goal and work through the task, call multiple functions across multiple apps, and take some action to achieve the goal. Unfortunately, however, while many are talking about AI agents, few are promoting actual products at CES. Continue reading CES: Show Features a Surprisingly Small Number of AI Agents
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Douglas ChanJanuary 9, 2025
During the “Speed, Customization, Innovation: AI in Gaming” panel during CES this week, game publishers and developers shared their latest insights regarding how they use generative AI tools. A prevailing question involved the impact of AI’s ability to generate pixels and video frames efficiently — especially in light of Nvidia’s keynote the prior evening announcing its new Blackwell RTX 50 Series GPUs’ enormous ability to do so. Other opinions shared during the panel included thoughts on whether AI is overhyped for gaming and wish lists for fixing the limitations of AI tools. Continue reading CES: Thoughts on the Benefits and Limitations of AI in Gaming
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Debra KaufmanJanuary 9, 2025
When it comes to gaming, Microsoft is not just about Xbox, the popular gaming console it introduced in 2001. Microsoft VP of Global Revenue & Business Planning Jonathan Stringfield wants brands to know that they can reach a broad ecosystem of gamers not just on its console but on mobile devices and PCs. “Consumers expect to be able to watch entertainment across platforms,” he said during a CES 2025 panel discussion. “That’s what we’re doing in the gaming space. And that’s a space that is exploding — not just in overall numbers but who those gamers are.” Continue reading CES: Microsoft Courts Brands for Its Three Gaming Platforms
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Paula ParisiJanuary 9, 2025
Wearable technology startup Halliday has unveiled smart glasses that beam images directly to the wearer’s eyes. At CES Unveiled, the Shenzhen-based company previewed AI-powered eyewear that that projects images directly into eyes instead of onto a lens and is controlled by a smart ring. The “minimal optical module projection technology,” coined DigiWindow, is being called first-of-its-kind. The device has a “proactive AI assistant” that reacts to its environment without being asked. The frames come in matte black or tortoiseshell and have lenses that can accommodate prescriptions. Continue reading CES: Halliday’s AI Smart Glasses Project Directly into the Eye
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Paula ParisiJanuary 9, 2025
BMW has revealed an upcoming release of its iDrive operating system that essentially turns the entire windshield into a 3D heads-up display. The “close-to-production” version of BMW Panoramic Vision showcased at CES 2025 integrates augmented reality to layer navigational directions and driver assistance tips onto the windshield. It also does away with the conventional dashboard “gauge cluster,” projecting digital equivalents onto the windshield that can be customized. The setup is powered by the new BMW Operating System X and will be introduced in all new BMW models from the end of 2025. Continue reading CES: BMW iDrive Turns the Car Windshield into an AR Display
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Debra KaufmanJanuary 8, 2025
During CES 2025 in Las Vegas this week, Meta Vice President and Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun had a compelling conversation with Wing Venture Capital Head of Research Rajeev Chand on the latest hot button topics in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. Some of the conclusions were that AI agents will become ubiquitous — but not for 10 to 15 years, human intelligence means different things to different AI experts, and nuclear power remains the best and safest source for powering AI. And, for those looking for more of LeCun’s tweets, he said he no longer posts on X. Continue reading CES: AI Pioneer Yann LeCun on AI Agents, Human Intelligence
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Debra KaufmanJanuary 8, 2025
At CES on Monday, Comcast unveiled Universal Ads, an advertising platform aimed at being an “easy button” for small- and medium-sized businesses to buy ad time on traditional TV’s streaming businesses, with the goal of luring them away from social media and digital outlets. In addition to Comcast’s own NBCUniversal, additional partners include DirecTV, Fox Corporation, Paramount, Roku, TelevisaUnivision and Warner Bros. Discovery. CNBC Senior Media & Tech Correspondent Julia Boorstin moderated a panel with Comcast and some major partners who explained why they signed on to the new platform. Continue reading CES: Comcast Debuts Universal Ads, Inks Media Partnerships
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Hank GerbaJanuary 8, 2025
German research organization Fraunhofer IIS has unveiled LC3plus Lossless, an audio codec that promises to streamline wireless audio transmission by introducing dynamic lossless capabilities to its established LC3plus technology. The new codec represents a complete solution for high-resolution wireless audio, automatically switching between lossless and lossy compression based on available bandwidth. This adaptive approach maintains perfect audio quality when possible while seamlessly falling back to high-quality compression when needed, all while preserving LC3plus’s core benefits of low latency and robust transmission. Continue reading CES: Fraunhofer Demonstrates Dynamic Lossless Audio Codec
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Douglas ChanJanuary 8, 2025
The Eureka Park section at CES 2025 in Las Vegas is an exhibition area dedicated to thousands of startups and early-stage products from across the globe. Our reporting team visited the space organized specifically for Japanese startups and discovered a few that are developing innovative technologies that could potentially be applied to 3D computer graphics modeling, XR, and gaming. Among the standouts were Tokyo-based CalTa that developed the digital twin platform Trancity — and Japanese telecom giant NTT Docomo’s exhibit of its ongoing Feel Tech system. Continue reading CES: Japanese Startups Showcase 3D Modeling, XR, Gaming
CES 2025 kicked off appropriately with a high-powered panel on AI’s impact in entertainment. Under the expert moderation of our friend, and former president of the Hollywood Professional Association, Seth Hallen, three of the industry’s most senior leaders spoke candidly about what the technology means to the industry: Samira Panah Bakhtiar (GM of Media and Entertainment, Games, and Sports at Amazon Web Services), Academy Award-winner Ed Ulbrich (Chief Content Officer and President of Production at Metaphysic), and Richard Kerris (GM of Media and Entertainment at Nvidia). Continue reading CES: Industry Leaders Highlight Transformative Potential of AI
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Douglas ChanJanuary 8, 2025
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang kicked off CES 2025 with a keynote that was filled with new product announcements and visionary demonstrations of how the company plans to advance the field of AI. The first product that Huang unveiled was the GeForce RTX 50 series of consumer graphics processing units (GPUs). The series is also called RTX Blackwell because it is based on Nvidia’s latest Blackwell microarchitecture design for next generation data center and gaming applications. To showcase RTX Blackwell’s prowess, Huang played an impressively photorealistic video sequence of rich imagery under contrasting light ranges — all rendered in real time. Continue reading CES: Nvidia Unveils New GeForce RTX 50, AI Video Rendering
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Debra KaufmanJanuary 8, 2025
In an era of tremendous innovation and an explosion of new lines of products, the creation of standards has never been so important. UL Standards & Engagement (ULSE) created its first standard in 1903 and now boasts a portfolio of 1,700 standards; other standards-setting bodies include the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA). Moderated by ULSE Director of Insights Sayon Deb, a CES panel of experts underscored the critical importance of such standards for developing and marketing innovative products. According to Deb, 60 percent of consumers express greater confidence in certified products. Continue reading CES: Standards Are Increasingly Vital for Fostering Innovation