Do you want a fridge that can identify grapes?

And not just grapes. In fact, Samsung’s newly unveiled AI Family Hub Fridge Freezer can identify 33 food types, largely fresh produce, thanks to an AI camera installed inside.

What this means is, as you add items to your fridge (one by one and not too quickly), its camera will pick up those it can identify and add them to an inventory of items you can see on the large LCD screen on the fridge’s door. You can then add use by dates to the inventory in order to minimise food wastage.

You can also click on an inventoried item and the Hub will suggest recipes in which it features. It’ll also provide a history of which items leave your fridge and which are put back – as long as they’re returned within an hour. (If not, they’ll be logged as new items.)

Samsung is working to add more identifiable foods and is even in the early stages of considering barcode recognition – but in the meantime, what of those foods the AI can’t yet spot? Those will have to be manually logged by the fridge’s owner, if they’re to be added to the inventory, at least.

You can see the problem. Unless you laboriously add all the types of food the AI fridge doesn’t know, you won’t have a complete inventory of your food. You’ll know, for example, that you have apples and can click on an apple on the fridge’s screen to get apple-based recipes, but unless you’ve also typed in custard and granola when you added them to the fridge, you won’t know whether you can make an apple crumble.

Some might say you could just open the fridge door to find out but – hang on. What’s the point of the digital fridge inventory again?

To be fair, although the AI food identifying feature is the attention grabber, the AI Family Hub does more than identify and catalogue (some) food.

When you’re out at the shops, you can check the SmartThings app to see what’s in your fridge. And you don’t have to rely on the inventory, either. There are cameras in both the left and right door bins, which you can access remotely, so you can see how much milk you have left and know whether or not you need to pick up more.

In fact, you don’t even need to go out to the shops. You can buy your groceries straight from the AI Hub’s screen, with live pricing from a number of supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Tesco.

And you can use voice control – via Bixby, who’ll be receiving a Gen AI glow-up that’ll allow the voice assistant to understand more than simple commands and engage in more natural conversations – to add items to your shopping list.

Not all of this technology is brand new. Some features are available on existing Samsung Family Hub fridges – just not the AI camera.

Samsung’s Bespoke AI line

It’s a truth at least currently acknowledged that all new tech must have AI jammed into it somewhere, whether or not there’s an obvious need for it.

The problem is that, once AI is in the mix, consumers still need to be convinced that it’s something they want, and crucially, something they ought to pay more to acquire. There’s also the possibility of requiring a subscription further down the line, as Samsung’s statement regarding AI features on its phones suggests.

Nonetheless, the company has launched a number of AI-led appliances together, in the Bespoke AI line. As well as the AI Family Hub Fridge Freezer, there’s a new robot vacuum, the AI Jet Bot Combo, a new AI Ecobubble washing machine and a second fridge, the AI Large 75cm Fridge freezer.

Samsung has not yet announced when the new products will be available to buy, so we’ll update this article when we know more, including US pricing and availability. But we do have UK prices:

• AI Family Hub Fridge Freezer: starting at £3,199
• AI Jet Bot Combo: starting at £1,199
• AI Ecobubble washing machine: starting at £909
• AI Large 75cm Fridge freezer: starting at £1,049

You’ll be able to buy all these appliances from Samsung once they’re available.