LG targets US premium home appliance market with Google AI

LG Electronics announced Thursday it will apply Google’s voice recognizing artificial intelligence to its premium home appliance lineup under the LG Signature brand for the US market starting this month.

The South Korean home electronics provider said it demonstrated Google Home-equipped LG home appliances at the Google I/O developer conference held in Mountain View, California on Wednesday.

Google Home is an AI-based speaker, powered by Google Assistant.

LG showcased talking to an LG Signature air purifier that is applied with the Google technology. As soon as the order was made, the Google Home switched on the air purifier and informed the user of the current air quality. 

The company decided to apply the Google Home service to the full lineup of LG Signature, which also includes refrigerator and washing machine, this month and launch the series in the US first.

Other home appliances, ranging from air conditioner, oven, dryer to robot vacuum cleaner will also be enhanced with the Google AI technology, later on, the company said.

“Since Google reportedly plans to add the Korean language to the Assistant by later this year, we hope to launch the Google AI-powered Signature series in Korea by then,” said a spokeswoman at LG Electronics.

LG owns a deep learning algorithm for home appliances, dubbed “Deep ThinQ.”

“Combined with the Google voice assistant, the AI feature in LG products will be much stronger,” the official said.

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)