Chair: Smart Kitchen Summit Founder Mike Wolf, Panelists: Innit President and Founder Eugenio Minvielle, Google Assistant Strategic Partnerships EMEA Vedran Bajer, Amazon Alexa Voice Services General Manager Theunis Scheepers, Electrolux Vice President Strategy and Innovation David Cronström
We’re running a series of stories all week to highlight what we learnt from our recent ‘Future Kitchen’ event. We invited food, kitchen and tech industry leaders to our headquarters to look deeper into the digital technologies, business models and societal shifts changing how the consumer eats, buys, stores and prepares food.
Highlight two
Voice control in the kitchen is still at a nascent stage but as more products become connected, the kitchen experience will transform for families in the future, agreed the panelists discussing the Future of Voice and AI In The Kitchen.
“Voice adds a lot of value to consumers’ lives in the kitchen. The kitchen has been named at the heart of the home for a long time and now we are giving it a voice and a brain with AI”, explained Electrolux Vice President Strategy and Innovation David Cronström.
To help guide consumers through their cooking journey, Electrolux is rolling out essential functionality on voice and smart ovens to make the consumer interaction with appliances more intuitive.
“With voice and AI we’re still at the beginning of the journey. We were one of the first appliance manufacturers to launch voice in North America and now we are expanding our partnership with Google into Europe and our smart ovens”, added Cronström.
Data will be key going forward, with the consensus amongst the panelists that there’s still a lot of learning required on how to apply the power of AI to build additional value for consumers in the kitchen. And whether the user has one or multiple assistants in the home, greater personalization and a more conversational interaction– not just a form of remote control – are needed to enhance the user experience in the smart home of the future.
