You don’t need to be able to predict the future to guess that our coverage of CES will be dominated by artificial intelligence — and LG is definitely on board. On Tuesday, December 19, LG announced that moving forward, all of its products that use A.I. — from household appliances to TVs — will unite under the new ThinQ brand.
“Our new ThinQ platform for LG’s intelligent products is the latest way that LG is delivering innovations that make consumers’ lives easier and more enjoyable,” LG Electronics USA vice president of marketing David VanderWaal said in a statement. “LG ThinQ enables deep learning technology and connectivity across household products, delivering even greater capabilities and convenience.”
The name ThinQ should seem familiar if you have experience with LG products. Many of the company’s products, like its washing machines, make use of the company’s SmartThinQ app, and at CES last year, the company chose the name DeepThinQ for the A.I. powering its home appliances. LG is already putting the ThinQ brand to work, using the name in its Dualcool ThinQ stand inverter air conditioner. And the company just announced the LG ThinQ, a smart speaker that comes with Google Assistant built in.
This new focus on smarter products has been fairly easy to see coming. Following the DeepThinQ announcement last year, LG announced an initiative to include Wi-Fi in its entire 2017 line of premium appliances. Then in June, the company launched its Artificial Intelligence Lab in Seoul, South Korea, with the aim of tying together all of its A.I. research under one roof.
This focus on A.I. doesn’t necessarily benefit only new products from LG. The company says that all appliances with SmartThinQ are built on an open platform, meaning they will continue to evolve and work with newer smart technologies and devices in the years to come. For example, the SmartThinQ app, which allows you to control all your LG appliances with one app, currently works with voice control via Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, but could work with other voice control platforms in the future.
LG will be showing off a wide range of products driven by A.I. in the ThinQ Zone at the company’s booth at CES, which kicks off on January 9.
