36Kr Research Institute | 2025 White Paper on the Development of China's AI Home Appliance Industry

In the wave of the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, large AI models are constantly being innovated, becoming a powerful engine for the transformation of various industries. In particular, the stunning release of DeepSeek, with its advantages of "low cost + high performance + open source", has broken the hegemony of computing power and accelerated the process of AI popularization. Its powerful inference ability and efficient learning algorithms have sparked a wave of "intelligent renewal fever" in the market. Many home appliance enterprises have acutely captured this opportunity and have connected to DeepSeek one after another, deeply integrating its technology into product R & D and upgrading. They have successfully led the AI home appliance industry into a new era of "active perception + predictive service", initiating the qualitative change process of smart life from concept to a rigid need.

The intelligent evolution of AI home appliances is divided into three stages, and currently it is in the second stage, namely the "seeing" stage

The intelligent evolution of AI home appliances can be divided into three main stages: from the era of voice interaction where appliances "understand what is said", to the era of perception and decision - making where they "can see", and finally to the era of autonomous action where they "can pick up and put down". During the voice - interaction era from 2016 to 2022, voice - recognition technology gave birth to the first - generation smart home appliances. Although they could achieve simple interaction through natural - language instructions and break the limitations of physical buttons, they could only execute linear instructions and lacked the ability of environmental perception and autonomous decision - making. Since 2023, the era of perception and decision - making has begun. The breakthroughs in the Transformer architecture and multimodal large models have enabled AI vision technology to reshape the underlying logic of home appliances. Home appliances now have the ability to "see", can automatically identify the environment and objects, understand user intentions, and provide personalized services, realizing the transformation from "execution tools" to "smart butlers". In the future era of autonomous action, home appliances will have the ability of overall coordination and operation, be able to interact deeply with the home environment, and achieve automatic picking and placing of items. The integration of home robots will become an important direction. Currently, the industry development is in a critical breakthrough period of the second stage. AI vision technology is reconstructing the paradigm of human - machine collaboration through multimodal environmental perception and intention understanding.

In the "seeing" stage, AI home appliances are undergoing a "triple revolution"

In the era of perception and decision - making where appliances "can see", significant changes are taking place in AI home appliances mainly in three aspects: user experience, technological reconstruction, and scenario evolution. In terms of user experience, through the upgrading of spatial perception, the upgrading of temporal perception, and the extension of the emotional dimension, users are shifting from "operating home appliances" in the past to "having their needs met". In terms of technological upgrading, AI home appliances break the limitations of single technology. Through the integration of multiple technologies such as multimodal perception, cloud - edge - end collaborative computing, few - shot learning, and adaptive optimization, they achieve a higher - order level of autonomous decision - making. In terms of scenario evolution, driven by AI technology, intelligent data interconnection and in - depth scenario - based collaboration among devices are realized, enabling home appliances to move from isolated single - machine operation to an interconnected and integrated smart - scenario ecosystem. Haier is a typical representative in this regard. Through its smart home scenario brand "Three - Winged Bird", it has released a "1 + 3+5 + N" whole - house smart full - scenario solution, covering the smart home brain, whole - house professional system solutions, smart space solutions, and multiple scenario - based experiences. In each scenario, home appliances no longer operate independently but are interconnected and work in collaboration.

As a leading brand in the large - scale home appliance industry, Haier Smart Home uses the "AI Eye" to empower home appliances and initiate the era of proactive service for smart homes

Haier Smart Home uses the "AI Eye" as the technological foundation, deeply integrating artificial intelligence into the R & D of home - appliance products and scenario design, and realizing innovation in home - appliance functions, thus becoming a new model for smart homes. Its core value lies in making AI truly an "invisible hand" to improve the quality of life through the invisibility of technology and the visibility of service. Specifically, it is manifested in the following aspects: First, by means of visual perception, home appliances are given "active observation ability", enabling refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, etc. to recognize the environment and user needs and realize the transformation from passive to proactive warning. Second, based on big data and deep learning, autonomous decision - making is achieved, allowing home appliances to autonomously optimize their operating logic. For example, smart water heaters can customize the "zero - cold - water" mode for family members, sweeping and mopping robots can intelligently adjust their paths, and ovens can automatically match cooking parameters, thus improving the efficiency of life. Third, through the "smart home brain", full - scenario collaboration is realized, connecting multiple scenarios such as food management, cooking, and cleaning, enabling seamless cooperation among various devices and integrating smart services into all aspects of life.

In the future, AI home appliances will achieve full - scenario autonomous collaboration and ubiquitous intelligence

With the in - depth integration of technologies such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, future AI home appliances will break through the limitations of physical forms, build a highly collaborative intelligent ecosystem, achieve seamless connection across all scenarios and ubiquitous intelligence, and reshape people's lifestyles. Inside the home, autonomous organization and reconstruction of home - appliance device groups will be completed. Based on digital twin technology, a four - dimensional model of the home space (x/y/z coordinates + time axis) will be constructed to realize scenario - based intelligent services. Outside the home, AI home appliances will be interconnected with smart - city systems, etc., to achieve ubiquitous ecological intelligence.

The key research questions in this report are as follows:

• How do large AI models promote the development of the AI home - appliance industry?
• How many stages can the intelligent evolution of AI home appliances be divided into? What are the characteristics of each stage? What are the key technological breakthroughs and application achievements in the current stage?
• What significant changes have taken place in the user experience of AI home appliances? How do these changes affect users' lives?
• What technological secrets are hidden behind the evolution of AI home appliances from passive response to proactive service?
• How do AI home - appliance products solve user pain points and achieve intelligent services in different functions and scenarios such as food cooking, cleaning and maintenance, and environmental management?
• What is the current development scale and growth trend of the AI home - appliance market, and what are the future development trends?
• What new functions are worth looking forward to in the future for AI home appliances to evolve into "all - around partners"?

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