At CES 2024 this week, Philips teased its first-ever smart deadbolt that works using a touch-free palm reading system that allows homeowners to unlock their front doors. The Philips 5000 Series Wi-Fi Palm Recognition Smart Deadbolt, will go on sale in the US early this year and will retail for $360.

The deadbolt will join the Philips home security smart lock product lineup and will integrate with the Phillips Home Access app where users can remotely control the lock system through
smart home assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. It’ll also have built-in Wi-Fi that makes it easier to pair and link to other smart devices.

The system works by automatically detecting unique palm vein patterns through its built-in proximity sensors. While palm sensing technology hasn’t fully hit the mainstream, we may start seeing more applications like this. Amazon, for example, is already offering a payment system powered by palm recognition in Whole Foods.

The new door smart lock is another part of Philips’ expanded smart home security product offerings, which include indoor and outdoor cameras and monitors that compete with Ring.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

LG has been trickling in news about its latest product drops at CES this year, with some first-of-its-kind headliners including its wireless transparent OLED TV, an ultra portable 4K projector and a friendly looking two-legged robot that can roam your house and watch your pets.

The 77-inch signature OLED T has turned heads with its unique "transparent" look and wireless audio and video capabilities. It's also powered by a processor that improves overall display performance and visuals by 70 percent compared to the precious gen chip, according to LG. Its OLED TV lineup is also getting bigger with the expected launch of the LG Signature OLED M4 and OLED G4 TVs. Both have Alpha 11 AI processor chips embedded in their design which are meant to up their display properties. The AI chips promise to reduce visual blurring and improve color contrasts.

There are some other big developments worth getting excited about in its display offerings — but in the gaming sphere. LG announced a 27-inch QHD OLED gaming display with an extremely fast 480Hz refresh rate.

Until now, TCL has perhaps been best known not for the quality of its TVs, but its reasonable prices. This week at CES 2024, however, the company seems like it’s trying to reintroduce itself as the sort of premium player that can could compete with the likes of Samsung, LG and Sony. The brand just debuted a new 115-inch set, the 115QM89, that it claims is the largest MiniLED TV with Quantum Dot technology.

The TV is an offshoot from TCL’s broader QM8 line, which includes premium TVs in the 65- to 98-inch range. The new set brings over some features from TCL’s previous QM8 TVs, but it adds a 6.2.2 channel speaker system that delivers a more surround sound-like home theater experience. The mega-sized screen also has a TCL AIPQ ULTRA processor that allows it to deliver higher-quality and crisper images than any of TCL’s previous TVs were capable of. Notably, too, the 115QM89 has 20,000 dimming zones, which is important for a bigger display so that shadows and highlights appear more defined, making moody movies and TV shows appear more vividly on screen.

Aside from that showstopper 115-inch TV, TCL the company debuted the premium Q6-Pro in 50- to 85-inch screen sizes, with improved local dimming for a 33 percent boost in display brightness at 600 peak nits. It also added the QM7, another Mini LED device to its lineup — which offers better processing speeds and display brightness as well as overall image quality.

In TCL’s lower-end to midrange S line, the company announced the new S5, which offers 4K UHD resolution in 43- to 85-inch screen sizes. The company also says these TVs will be 25 percent brighter than the previous generation and will offer improved color depiction thanks to that new TCL AIPQ processor. Additionally, the S5 will include HDR PRO+ along with Dolby Vision for overall improved image quality.

Lastly, TCL introduced some new S and Q class soundbars. At the top of the line, these include the S55H, a new 2.1 Channel Dolby Atmos soundbar, and the Q85H, which offers 7.1.4 Channel Dolby Atmos sound and can wirelessly connect to rear speakers for what TCL describes as a more immersive sound experience.

Firefly Green Fuels, a UK-based company, has developed a new form of jet fuel that is entirely fossil-free and made from human waste. The company worked with experts at Cranfield University to confirm that the fuel they developed had a 90 percent lower carbon footprint than what is used in aviation today, according to the BBC. Tests by independent regulators validated that what Firefly Green Fuels has developed is nearly identical to standard A1 jet fuel.

In 2021, the company received a £2 million grant from the Department of Transport to continue developing its sustainable aviation fuel. Although it’s not yet available commercially, the company says it is on track to bringing its fuel to the global market and it will have its first commercial plant operating within 5 years. The company has already inked a partnership with the budget airline Wizz Air — the name of the company and the source of its potential combustibles could scarcely be a more perfect pairing — to supply it with fuel starting in 2028.

It currently sources its waste from water companies in the UK and takes the refined sewage through a process called hydrothermal liquefaction, which converts the liquid waste into a sludge or crude oil. Solid by-products can also be made into crop fertilizer. The company claims that the carbon intensity of the whole process — which measures how much carbon is needed to produce energy — is 7.97 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule (gCO²e/MJ). Comparatively, the ICCT says carbon intensity recorded for jet fuel ranges from 85 to 95 gCO²e/MJ.

Organic matter, as the company points out, takes millions of years to develop into the fossil fuels that power cars and planes. Firefly’s solution makes it possible to generate fuel in a matter of days — and more importantly, human waste is a widely available resource. It's unclear if sustainable jet fuel will be more or less expensive than what is currently available. The company could not immediately be reached for comment. However, in a statement, the company’s CEO James Hygate made mention that using human waste is a “cheap and abundant feedstock [that] will never run out.”

The achievement of carbon neutrality in our airspaces has been a longtime goal for regulators and leaders in Europe and the US. While EVs have made headway in the car industry, it might be a while before we see battery powered commercial jets. So in the meantime, solutions for creating more environmentally-friendly jet fuel are welcome.

LG is going to start selling a compact bipedal robot that can roll around your house freely. The AI-powered robot, which will debut at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, has a wide range of capabilities — from notifying you that you left the AC on while you're away to watching your pet while you're at work. Like stationary smart home aids, like Alexa or Apple HomePod, LG’s robot can also tell you the weather and remind you to take your medications on time.

The robot is powered by Qualcomm’s Robotics RB5 Platform, which entails a mix of hardware and software that run the bot’s AI program. Some of these include its ability to recognize faces and voices, process the emotions of those around it and engage in conversation. LG says the bot will be able to greet you at your door, analyze your emotions and play music to either boost your good mood or lull you to sleep. It can even “emote” by changing its posture thanks to its articulated leg joints. Although it's a cute feature, it might not have any practical use beyond making it approachable.

The robot is also equipped with a camera in its face, a speaker and various sensors throughout that give it the ability to navigate, speak and listen. It can also measure indoor air quality and temperature, however, it's unclear if it can actually be linked to a smart home system and control your thermostat. LG has not yet responded to comment on this and said the price of the robot will be announced at a later time.

Because the bot can move around freely, you can program it to look after your pets while you're gone and send your smartphone notifications “if any unusual activity is detected.” Using the same monitoring tools, the bot can act as a mobile “security guard” and send you notifications if there is movement in the house while you're away. Or more likely, just let you know you left the kitchen lights on.

Researchers from Linköping University in Sweden developed a ‘bioelectronic soil’ that can speed up the growth of plants in hydroponic spaces, or farms that grow plants without soil in environments made up of mostly water and a place for roots to attach. After integrating the engineered ‘eSoil’ into the framework where seedlings grow, researchers discovered that sending electrical signals through the soil made plants grow 50 percent more on average. 

The eSoil is made up of organic substances mixed with a conductive polymer called PEDOT, which can be found in things like sensors and OLED displays. Eleni Stavrinidou, the supervisor of the study, told Engadget that the soil’s conductivity was necessary for stimulating the plant roots. In this particular study, the researchers examined the effect of sending signals to barley seedlings over the span of 15 days before harvesting them for analysis. Applying a voltage as small as 0.5V on the eSoil electrically stimulates the roots, Stavrinidou explained. This, in turn, resulted in a recordable increase in the biomass of the electrically stimulated plants when compared to the non-stimulated seedings.

The stimulation’s effect on the barley seedlings was described as “steady” and “transient.” Stavrinidou told Engadget that nitrogen, one of the main nutrients involved in plant growth, was processed more efficiently through the stimulation. "We found that the stimulated plants could process the nutrients more efficiently however we don't understand how the stimulation is affecting this process,” Stavrindou explained, adding that the reason behind the growth process will be a focus of future studies.

PNAS

While hydroponic techniques are mainly used to grow vegetables, leafy greens and some vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes, the eSoil could offer a solution to create new ways to increase crop yields in commercial settings and especially in places where environmental conditions impact plant growth. The study highlights that this technique could minimize the use of fertilizers in farming.

The opportunity for technological innovation in farming is huge considering the number of US farms has steadily declined since 1982, according to the Department of Agriculture. Last year, the number of US farms reached 2 million, down from 2.2 million in 2007. Not only are farms on the decline, but the US is losing acres of land due to a host of reasons that range from climate change to worsening economic outlook for farmers due to inflation, making farming in controlled environments more popular.

But beyond improving crop yield, the implementation of eSoil to hydroponic farms could make it more energy-conscious. While traditional hydroponic farms use up less water, they require more energy to run. “The eSoil consumes very little power in the microwatt range,” Stavrinidou said. Before this technology can be applied to large-scale agriculture and other types of crops, more studies need to be conducted to observe how electrical stimulation can impact the whole growth cycle of a plant throughout its entire lifespan and not just in the early stages of seedling maturation. Stavrinidou also said that her team plans on studying how the technique affects the growth of other plant species.

The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using published news articles to train its artificial intelligence chatbots without an agreement that compensates it for its intellectual property. The lawsuit, which was filed in a Federal District Court in Manhattan, marks the first time a major news organization has pursued the ChatGPT developers for copyright infringement. The NYT did not specify how much it seeks in payout from the companies but that “this action seeks to hold them responsible for the billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages.”

The NYT claims that OpenAI and Microsoft, the makers of Chat GPT and Copilot, “seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism” without having any licensing agreements. In one part of the complaint, the NYT highlights that its domain (www.nytimes.com) was the most used proprietary source mined for content to train GPT-3.

It alleges more than 66 million records, ranging from breaking news articles to op-eds, published across the NYT websites and other affiliated brands were used to train the AI models. The lawsuit alleges that the defendants in the case have used “almost a century’s worth of copyrighted content,” causing significant harm to the Times’ bottom line. The NYT also says that OpenAI and Microsoft’s products can “generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style.” This mirrors other complaints from comedians and authors like Sarah Silverman and Julian Sancton who claim OpenAI has profited off their works.

If the lawsuit makes any headway, it could create opportunities for other publishers to pursue similar legal action and make training AI models for commercial purposes more costly. Competitors in the space, like CNN and BBC News have already tried limiting what data AI web crawlers can scrape for training and development purposes.

While it’s unclear if NYT is open to a licensing agreement after its earlier negotiations failed, leading to the lawsuit, OpenAI has reached a few deals recently. This month, it agreed to pay publisher Axel Springer for access to its content in a deal projected to be worth millions. And articles from Politico and Business Insider will be made available to train OpenAI’s next gen AI tools as part of a three year deal. It also previously made a deal with the AP to use its archival content dating back to 1985. Microsoft and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft’s Copilot tool, the company’s AI chatbot that can do everything from help you write code to draft a marketing email, has made its way onto Android mobile devices. Copilot, which is powered by OpenAI's latest models GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, can also be used to generate images from simple text descriptions and requests. The app is available on the Google Play Store, is free to download and does not require a Microsoft account to sign in.

The rollout of a mobile version of Microsoft’s Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) was quiet — with little buzz and no formal announcements, unlike what we saw with the release of Bing Chat on mobile devices. The new Copilot app was released earlier this month and was initially spotted by Neowin when X users noticed it in the Play Store. Copilot is still not available on iOS though, and the company has yet to make any promises for a release date.

It only makes sense that Copilot has made its way to mobile devices (or at least on Android to start). Microsoft’s previous move to bring Copilot to Windows 10, after launching on Edge, Microsoft 365 products and Windows 11 — added an additional 1 billion devices that are eligible to use the AI assistant, signaling Microsoft’s deadset view on expansion. This coincides with the company’s recent updates to Copilot which include its video summarization capability and song creation feature.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is proposing changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) to make it harder for tech companies to track and monetize children’s data. Some of the proposed changes include placing limits on how long companies can retain data they collect from minors and forcing parents to consent to, or opt out of, targeted marketing.

COPPA has been around since April 2000 and currently requires some level of transparency from online services and websites. Before collecting data from minors, providers need to obtain “verifiable parental consent.” In 2013, the FTC tried to narrow the definition of what a provider is to any digital service that weaves an advertising network into its platform and collects personal data — regardless of whether or not a website or online service is particularly directed toward children. At the time, they also expanded the scope of what constitutes ‘personal information’ to include geolocation and any photos or videos that depict a child’s image, among other things.

In its new proposal, the FTC wants to expand the scope of personal information in COPPA again to include biometric data. The proposal will also scrutinize digital service providers for sending push notifications that encourage kids to keep using their service and attempt to close any loopholes for data collection to “support for internal operations.”

“When we consider the harms of online behavioral advertising to children, we cannot forget one of the original reasons COPPA was envisioned and enacted: A desire to ensure that companies cannot build a commercial relationship with children that preys on their immaturity, honesty, and trust,” FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya said in a statement.

The FTC also wants to make it harder to monetize children’s data generated in the classroom in an effort to enhance privacy safeguards for students. If passed, COPPA will allow schools to gain more control over whether or not to allow educational tech providers the option to collect or use students’ personal information.

Lina Khan, the chair of the FTC, took to X to voice support for the proposal, writing: “Our proposed changes to COPPA are much-needed, especially in an era where online tools have become essential for navigating daily life,” adding that companies are deploying increasingly sophisticated ways to collect kids’ data. The FTC will collect public comments on the proposal for 60 days before taking any further regulatory action.

At its heart, Squid Game is a critique of capitalism and yet, Netflix can’t stop finding ways to squeeze money from it. After renewing the show for a second season and then debuting a reality show based on the series, Netflix opened a pop-up experience in Los Angeles where fans can pay to play games inspired by the show, eat Korean snacks and maybe even buy some costumes.

If you purchase general admission tickets (starting at $39), you are agreeing to participate as a contestant in a series of six games designed by Netflix inspired by the show's deadly challenges — from glass bridge, where players have to memorize which tiles light up, to a game of ‘Gganbu’, where you have to steal all of your opponent's marbles to win. Instead of dying, though, you're given a bracelet that buzzes when you lose a game — but you get to move on anyway and play all six games.

As you move from room to room or game to game, you’re competing against other players in the game for a title to win. In a bit of a gimmick, Netflix says that if a guest passes all six challenges within the 70-minute experience window, it will give interested patrons priority casting consideration for a spot on the reality TV offshoot of the show, which was recently renewed for a second season. For now, the experience is only available in Los Angeles and is running for a limited time through the new year. Netflix hinted that ‘Squid Game: The Trials’ will later come to another city.

Samsung

In building this in-person pop-up space, Netflix partnered with Samsung – of course, one of Korea’s premier hometown companies. For example, during Red Light, Green Light, the Galaxy S23 Ultra positioned in the game room captures key moments of gameplay with Hyperlapse video and still images. Samsung TVs and Galaxy mobile devices will be dotted throughout individual games and participants will have to navigate “experiential zones” that are surrounded by Samsung TV screens, including the flagship Neo QLED 8K, the 4K and The Frame.

Once a player is done with the games, general admission grants you access to a ‘Korean Night Market’ where you can purchase street food and soju-infused cocktails. You can also buy the signature green tracksuit worn by contestants (a Halloween costume for next year, maybe, if Squid Game costumes are still cool then?). There are also arcade-style and mini-games inspired by the show available for play.

Netflix

More broadly, Netflix has been exploring ways to break free from its identity as a streaming-only service and has explored expanding into new categories outside its main service. From expanding its footprint in the gaming space (including VR) to launching brick-and-mortar branded retail stores and even dining space next year, Netflix seems determined to try to make some money selling goods and experiences inspired by its media library. The new Squid Game immersive live experience won't be the streaming company’s first bet on pop-up experiences either. It has already experimented with the format with other hit shows like Stranger Things and Bridgerton, where it invited fans to dress in ball gowns and try to win the Queen’s attention for the title of the ‘season's diamond.’