Humanoid robots are one of those dreams that sometimes feel like we’re on the precipice of realizing. Boston Dynamics has its Atlas robot, and Tesla is pursuing robotics, while companies like Mercedes, Amazon, and BMW are or will be testing robots for industrial use. But those are all very expensive robots performing tasks in controlled environments. In the home, they might still be far off.
Technology
Apple’s next nebulous idea: smart home robots
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25484054/STK469_WWDC_2_2024_E.jpg?ssl=1 "Apple’s next nebulous idea: smart home robots")
Enter Apple. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has said its robotics projects are under the purview of former Google employee John Giannandrea, who has been in charge of Siri and, for a time, the Apple Car. With the car project canceled, Vision Pro launched, and “Apple Intelligence” around the corner, is that the next big thing?
According to his information, any humanoid Apple robot is at least a decade away. Still, simpler ideas may be closer — a smaller robot that might follow you around or another idea involving a large iPad display on a robotic arm that emotes along with the caller on the other end with head nods and the like.
Many, if not most, homes are dens of robot-confounding chaos.
A mobile robot is tricky, though; what in the world would Apple do with a home robot that follows me around? Will it play music? Will it have wheels, or will it walk? Will I be expected to talk to AJAX or SiriGPT or whatever the company names its chatbot? Or, given Apple’s rumored OpenAI deal, some other chatbot?
For that matter, what form will it take? Will it fly? Will it have wheels? Will it be a ball? Can I kick it?
Its form factor will be at least as important as its smarts. Houses have stairs, furniture that sometimes moves, clothes that end up on the floor, pets that get in the way, and kids who leave their stuff everywhere. Doors that opened or closed just fine yesterday don’t do so today because it rained. A haphazard kitchen remodel 20 years ago might mean your refrigerator door slams into the corner of the wall by the stairs because why would you put the refrigerator space anywhere else, Dave? But I digress.
Based on what little detail has trickled out, Apple’s robotics ideas seem to fit a trend of charming novelty bots we’ve seen lately.
One recent example is Samsung’s Bot Handy concept, which looks like a robot vacuum with a stalk on top and a single articulating arm, meant to carry out tasks like picking up after you or sorting your dishes. There’s also the cute ball-bot, Ballie, that Samsung has shown off at a couple of CES shows. The latest iteration follows its humans and packs a projector that can be used for movies, video calls, or entertaining the family dog.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s $1,600 home robot with a tablet for a face, Astro, is still available by invitation only. It is charming, in a late 90s Compaq-computer-chic aesthetic sort of way, but it’s not clear that it’s functionally more useful than a few cheap wired cameras and an Echo Dot.
LG says its Q9 “AI Agent” is a roving smart home controller that can guess your mood and play music for you based on how it supposes you’re feeling. I’m very skeptical of all of that, but it has a handle, and I do love a piece of technology with a built-in handle.
I still want a sci-fi future filled with robotic home assistants that save us from the mundane tasks that keep us from the fun stuff we would rather do. But we don’t all live in the pristine, orderly abode featured in Samsung’s Ballie video or the videos Apple produces showing its hardware in personal spaces. Many normal homes are dens of robot-confounding chaos that tech companies will have a hard time accounting for when they create robots designed to follow us or autonomously carry out chores.
There are other paths to take. Take the Ring Always Home Cam, which will be very noisy judging from the demo videos, but it could also be useful and even good. While putting aside the not-insignificant privacy implications for a moment, it seems promising to me mostly because of the mobility and that it’s only designed to be a patrolling security camera.
That kind of focused functionality means it’s predictable, which is what makes single-purpose gizmos and doodads work. After some experimentation, my smart speakers are where they hear me consistently or are the most useful, and I can put my robot vacuums in the rooms I know I’ll keep clean enough that they won’t get trapped or break something (usually).
The robot vacuums I have — the Eufy Robovac L35 and a Roomba j7 — do an okay job, but they sometimes need rescuing when they find my cat’s stringy toys or eat a paperclip (which are somehow always on the floor even though I never, ever actually need one or even know where we keep them).
I have a kid, see, and preparing the way for them in other parts of the house is just adding more work to the mix. That’s fine for me because the two rooms in their charge are the ones that need vacuuming the most, so they’re still solving a problem, but it waves at the broader hurdles robotic products face.
And it’s not all that clear that AI can solve those problems. A New York Times opinion piece recently pointed out that despite all the hand-wringing about the tech over the last year and a half, generative AI hasn’t proven that it will be any better at making text, images, and music than the “mediocre vacuum robot that does a passable job.”
Given the generative AI boom and rumors that Apple is working on a HomePod with a screen, a cheerful, stationary smart display that obsequiously turns its screen to face me all the time seems at least vaguely within the company’s wheelhouse. Moving inside the house and interacting with objects is a trickier problem, but companies like Google and Toyota have seen success using generative AI training approaches for robots that “learn” how to do things like make breakfast or quickly sort items with little to no explicit programming.
It’ll be years, maybe even decades, before Apple or anyone else can bring us anything more than clumsy, half-useful robots that blunder through our homes, being weird, frustrating, or broken. Heck, phone companies haven’t even figured out how to make notifications anything but the bane of our collective existence. They’ve got their work cut out for them with homes like mine, where we’re just one busy week away from piles of clutter gathering like snowdrifts, ready to ruin some poor robot’s day.
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When Oregon resident Isabelle Reksopuro heard Google was gobbling up public land to fuel its data centers in her home state, she didn’t initially know what to believe. “There’s a lot of misinformation about data centers,” she said. “Google has denied taking that land.”
Technically, she explains, The Dalles, a city near the Washington state border, sought to reclaim that land, “and Google is just a big, unnamed power user.” The city had in fact asked for ownership of a 150-acre portion of Mount Hood National Forest, claiming it needs access to Mount Hood’s watershed to meet municipal needs as its population — 16,010 as of the 2020 census — grows. But critics, including environmentalists, say the city is trying to secure more water for Google, which has a sprawling data center campus in The Dalles that already consumes about one-third of the city’s water supply.
This controversy made Reksopuro curious about the backlash to data centers being built in other communities. So Reksopuro, a student at the University of Washington who studies the connections between tech and public policy, decided to map it out. Using information collected by Epoch AI and data scraped from legislation on data centers, she built an interactive map tracking AI policy around the world. She designed it to be simple enough for anyone to use. “I wanted it to be something that my younger sisters could play through and explore to understand what are the data centers in the area and what’s actually being done about it,” Reksopuro said. She hoped to shift their opinions that way, “instead of like, through TikTok.”
Four times a day, the map searches for new sources and checks them against the existing database Reksopuro built out. “Once it does that, it will write a new summary, add it to the news feed, and populate it on the sidebar,” she said. “I wanted it to be self-updating, since I’m also a student.”
Reksopuro isn’t against data centers, but she thinks tech giants benefit from a lack of transparency around data center policies. “Right now, it’s this really opaque thing — and all of a sudden, there’s a facility,” she said. “I think that if people knew about data centers beforehand, it would give them leverage. They would be able to negotiate: ask for job training programs, tax revenue, environmental monitoring, things to improve their community.”
UCF commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield (University of Central Florida via Storyful)
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IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER:
– UCF graduates clobber commencement speaker with boos after she says AI is the ‘next Industrial Revolution’
– OPINION: DIRECTOR KASH PATEL: We brought the FBI out of the past and into the AI age
– OpenAI backs creation of global AI governance body led by the U.S. that would include China as a member
TOUGH CROWD: During a recent commencement ceremony at the University of Central Florida, a speaker was met with loud boos from the graduating class after declaring that artificial intelligence represents the next industrial revolution. Fox News Digital reporting captures this tense cultural moment, illustrating the mixed public sentiment and skepticism surrounding AI’s growing footprint in daily life.
A statue on the campus of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. (iStock)
BADGE MEETS BYTE: Reflecting on the modernization of national security in a Fox News op-ed, FBI Director Kash Patel explores how the bureau must adapt its strategies to address modern threats and advance beyond the artificial intelligence age.
TECH DIPLOMACY: OpenAI is throwing its support behind the establishment of a new global artificial intelligence governance organization that would be led by the United States while notably including China as a member. Fox News Digital reporting examines the geopolitical dynamics and regulatory implications of this proposed framework as global powers race to set the standards for AI development.
EQUITY ELEVATION: The massive wave of wealth generated by the explosive growth of ChatGPT and the broader AI industry is driving a sudden surge in the San Francisco Bay Area’s luxury real estate market. Fox News Digital reporting breaks down how the influx of new tech capital is reshaping local housing dynamics and fueling a high-end property frenzy.
FBI Director Kash Patel listened as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke during a press conference at the Department of Justice on April 28, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
STRATEGY RESET: Tech giant Cisco is planning to eliminate thousands of jobs as the company shifts its primary focus to accelerate its artificial intelligence initiatives, a move that comes despite the company beating earnings expectations. Fox News Digital reporting details the corporate restructuring and broader economic trends pushing legacy tech firms to aggressively pivot toward AI.
ROAD HAZARD: Waymo is issuing a sweeping recall of its autonomous vehicle fleet following a concerning incident that highlighted significant safety issues with the self-driving technology. Fox News Digital reporting outlines the specifics of the recall, the nature of the safety flaw, and what this setback means for the future of fully autonomous transportation on public roads.
BOTS IN THE BAY: A newly developed, artificial intelligence-powered robot has been engineered to seamlessly change and balance vehicle tires without human intervention. Fox News Digital reporting showcases this latest innovation, exploring how automation and AI mechanics could soon revolutionize the automotive service and repair industry.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the 2026 Infrastructure Summit in Washington, D.C., on March 11, 2026. (Kylie Cooper/Reuters)
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Microsoft Edge is adding a new feature that will allow its Copilot AI chatbot to gather information from all of your open tabs. When you start a conversation with Copilot, you can ask the chatbot questions about what’s in your tabs, compare the products you’re looking at, summarize your open articles, and more.
In its announcement, Microsoft says you can “select which experiences you want or leave off the ones you don’t.” The company is retiring Copilot Mode as well, which could similarly draw information from your tabs but offered some agentic features, like the ability to book a reservation on your behalf. Microsoft has since folded these agentic capabilities into its “Browse with Copilot” tool.
Several other AI features are coming to Edge, including an AI-powered “Study and Learn” mode that can turn the article you’re looking at into a study session or interactive quiz. There’s a new tool that turns your tabs into AI-powered podcasts as well, similar to what you’d find on NotebookLM, and an AI writing assistant that will pop up when you start entering text on a webpage.
You can also give Copilot permission to access your browsing history to provide more “relevant, high-quality answers,” according to Microsoft. Copilot in Edge on desktop and mobile will come with “long-term memory” as well, which can tailor its responses based on your previous conversations. And, when you open up a new tab, you’ll see a redesigned page that combines chat, search, and web navigation, along with the Journeys feature, which uses AI to organize your browsing history into categories that you can revisit.
Meanwhile, an update to Edge’s mobile app will allow you to share your screen with Copilot and talk through the questions about what you’re seeing. Microsoft says you’ll see “clear visual cues” when Copilot is active, “so you know when it’s taking an action, helping, listening, or viewing.”
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