Is AI necessary for air conditioners?
According to the proponents of the "Year One" theory, 2024 was the Year One for AI hardware.
However, one year later, when discussing the integration of AI and hardware, the public's imagination is still confined to a few classic scenarios. Apart from embodied intelligent robots with rather vague application scenarios, whether it's smart speakers that have gradually become children's toys or learning machines that simply combine voice recognition with tablets, they are essentially the same old faces from the smart hardware craze a decade ago.
It's not that the public can't keep up with the pace of AI innovation. Instead, more products using "AI hardware" as a gimmick are still trying to create "non - existent" demands, such as the "GPT - enabled" wearables like AI sleep rings and AI video - recording pendants. Perhaps the greatest success of these products is proving that engineers' imagination can forcibly define an AI product.
What's the latest answer for AI + hardware? Midea has offered some new solutions in the smart home field.
On April 26th, Midea, a technology giant in the air - conditioning industry, held its first "AI Technology Day" at its corporate headquarters, which was also the first of its kind in the home appliance industry. Product managers and R & D personnel led users to experience the application of AI technology in air - conditioning products up close. They broke down the cold technical jargon and presented it to users, and also listened to users' needs face - to - face and received their feedback.
Beyond voice control and remote switching, what can an AI air - conditioner do?
Many AI hardware entrepreneurs get product inspiration from mobile apps. They are good at integrating apps with large - scale models and then turning them into hardware forms, such as card - style meeting assistants like Plaud Note or chat - enabled AI companion dolls. The design concept of these AI products is to break away from the mobile - phone usage scenario and, with the addition of AI, better meet people's current usage needs. This is also one of the fundamental problems that AI + hardware aims to solve. In the smart home appliance industry, when users want to adjust the temperature but can't find the remote control or their phone in the room, solving this problem becomes even more urgent.
To meet the most basic expectation that "air - conditioners can understand human speech", traditional AI home appliance manufacturers usually combine "voice control + mobile app" with home appliances. The interaction between humans and home appliances is limited to the "command - response" mode.
Then, how much improvement can the "understanding" ability of large - scale models bring to an air - conditioner?
First of all, an air - conditioner's understanding of "commands" can break through the limitations of traditional voice interaction. For example, by deploying the private DeepSeek large - scale model, Midea's Fresh & Clean Air Machine T6 can achieve "fuzzy command control" and "multi - intent understanding from a single sentence". When a user on - site casually says, "Xiaomei, Xiaomei, I feel a bit cold. Play me a song", the air machine can immediately capture the user's real intention and increase the temperature.
Besides the revolutionary improvement in voice control, which has often been criticized by users, a greater change occurs in the way an air - conditioner "responds" to commands.
Human perception is limited. Air is invisible and intangible, and people don't know if the concentration of harmful substances in the air has reached the level that requires disinfection. However, an air - conditioner equipped with a high - precision TVOC sensor has more perception dimensions. It can actively sense environmental changes in terms of temperature, humidity, wind speed, cleanliness, and freshness, and make reasonable responses according to the current environment. In fact, the air - conditioner no longer waits for human commands but directly makes adjustment decisions based on data, upgrading the "command - response" mode to the "perception - decision - execution" mode.
In this way, whether there is an unpleasant smell after having a hot pot at home or there are dust and lint in the air, the air - conditioner can autonomously sense and handle air problems in the living space. According to Song Mingjie, a product manager at Midea Air - Conditioning, compared with traditional multi - dimensional adjustment machines, the Fresh & Clean Air Machine T6 can reduce users' manual operations by 73%.
This means that as the integration of AI and smart hardware deepens, smart home appliances have evolved from simply following single commands to making active decisions and even providing active services.
How can AI make an air - conditioner adapt to humans?
Traditional air - conditioners have many pain points. For example, cold air blows on the shoulders and knees. Children like to sit in front of the air - outlet in the living room and won't listen when told not to. There are also countless nights of being woken up by cold or heat. In the past, people had to adapt their bodies to the air - conditioner, such as using air - conditioner blankets and buying wind deflectors. To prevent children from catching a cold, people even turned off the living - room air - conditioner all year round. However, the addition of AI can solve these seemingly unreasonable demands.
Midea's Wind - Free Sense WF1 floor - standing air - conditioner uses a "smart wind control" technology. It combines AI algorithms with millimeter - wave radar to achieve human body dynamic tracking. It can monitor human activities in a 120° area within 3 meters in front of it in real - time, automatically identify the user's position and posture, and actively avoid blowing directly at people.
This technology can directly solve the problems of people sensitive to cold air. For example, when a child is playing on the right side of the living room and the air - conditioner keeps outputting cold air at the set temperature, the child is likely to catch a cold. But AI can identify this and reduce the cold air output on the right side, minimizing the piercing cold wind.
At Midea's "AI Technology Day" event, a user held a windmill in front of the air - outlet, and the air - conditioner accurately avoided blowing at it, leaving the windmill still. However, this doesn't mean the cold air was stopped. Instead, after passing through 13,000 micro - holes, the air became a gentle, shower - like cool breeze.
Midea's new - generation full - range air - conditioner also caters to some special needs. In the past, people with rhinitis would easily sneeze in a cold - air environment because the air - conditioner's air supply had dead spots, resulting in uneven room temperature and sudden temperature changes. Through AI algorithms, it can dynamically predict indoor temperature changes and adjust the temperature in real - time, keeping the room temperature fluctuation within one degree.
This proves that people don't need to adapt to home appliances; instead, AI can make home appliances adapt to people.
What does an AI air - conditioner do with the collected data?
The training of large - scale models is essentially a systematic project that requires continuous feeding with massive amounts of data. The scale and quality of data directly determine the intelligence level of the algorithm.
At the "AI Technology Day" event, a product manager of Midea's Cool & Power - Saving Ultra series revealed that Midea Air - Conditioning can make its AI algorithms more in line with users' usage habits based on the huge data assets from 160 million users.
Especially in terms of power - saving, after analyzing data from 34 provincial regions, AI air - conditioners can predict users' power - consumption habits through algorithms and personalized user modeling. They can recognize the demand for dehumidification during the rainy season in South China users and understand the expectation of combating dryness in Northwest China users, thus achieving precise energy - saving, with a maximum energy - saving rate of 46%. At this energy - saving rate, the Cool & Power - Saving Ultra floor - standing air - conditioner can save enough electricity in one year for an electric car to travel between Beijing and Guangzhou. If used for ten years, it can save 8,160 kWh of electricity, equivalent to 4,500 yuan.
Even more "sci - fi" is that every Cool & Power - Saving product from Midea comes standard with OTA functionality. This feature allows the air - conditioner's parameters to continuously learn and upgrade based on user feedback, and the upgraded features are then fed back to every Cool & Power - Saving Ultra series product, enabling users to enjoy the services after each upgrade.
With the support of big data, AI air - conditioners can also provide customized services for specific groups. For example, the Wind - Free Sense WF1 floor - standing air - conditioner can analyze the needs of millions of mother - and - baby users through AI big - data analysis and automatically adjust parameters to achieve the optimal ratio of temperature, humidity, and wind, providing a customized comfortable wind - sense experience for mothers and babies.
The determination of self - exposure in Midea's "AI Technology Day"
As major manufacturers rush to label their products with AI, users are becoming increasingly frustrated.
On one hand, all products seem eager to claim themselves as AI hardware. For example, some PCs become AIPCs just by integrating a large - language model. On the other hand, the overuse of technical terms has become a cognitive barrier. It seems that products can't distinguish themselves from "pseudo - AI" products without showing off their parameters.
Users are finding it increasingly difficult to tell whether the complex algorithm architectures described in product detail pages are really aimed at solving real pain points or just marketing slogans created to create a price premium.
Midea Air - Conditioning's "AI Technology Day" is a new attempt. In a market environment where the AI concept is over - consumed, Midea is trying to actively simplify complexity and turn boring parameters into tangible on - site experiences.
The "AI Technology Day" is not the only way for brand self - exposure, but Midea is creating the possibility of experiential consumption, allowing users to become insiders in product testing and transform from bystanders into co - creators.
This also shows Midea's ambition. It not only wants to showcase its technical strength in front of the media and peers but also encourages users to deeply participate in product innovation and define the future of products. This is also a display of technological confidence.
Besides the application and implementation of AI technology, Midea's technology R & D layout also covers the special scenario of the kitchen.
For the high - temperature and high - fume environment unique to Chinese cooking, Midea has invested tens of millions of yuan in independently developing the "Meifu No. 0 refrigerant", which has been successfully applied to the Meifu Cool Embedded Kitchen Air - Conditioner without an outdoor unit. The maximum condensation temperature of ordinary refrigerants can reach 55°C, while that of the "Meifu No. 0 refrigerant" is as high as 75°C. It has high heat - exchange efficiency and can take away four times as much heat as before with the same amount of air volume. Even when cooking with high - heat in the kitchen, it can still provide efficient cooling. At the same time, this air - conditioner has undergone comprehensive anti - corrosion treatment. For example, the air - conditioner fins are coated with a graphene anti - oil layer, which improves the anti - corrosion effect by four times compared with ordinary fins.
In addition, in the kitchen scenario, the split - type structure of traditional air - conditioners is particularly cumbersome. There is nowhere to place the outdoor unit, and there is also a lack of suitable installation space indoors. Midea's Meifu Cool Embedded Kitchen Air - Conditioner without an outdoor unit solves this problem from the source of design compactness. It simply eliminates the outdoor unit and customizes all components such as the wind wheel, air duct, air pipe, and compressor to be more compact and assembles them closely together. Even in an old house or a small kitchen, it can be installed by removing six aluminum ceiling panels.
In the past two years, Midea has invested 1.3 billion yuan in building a new innovation science park and hiring new engineers to focus on R & D. This is why there was a successful demonstration of AI air - conditioners at the "AI Technology Day" and the introduction of disruptive technologies for the kitchen scenario.
Before "Open Days" and "Technology Days" became popular, each brand seemed to have its own way of defining such events.
