Home appliance makers sharpen edge with AI

As the ever-increasing power of artificial intelligence spearheads a new wave of technological innovation and industrial revolution, Chinese home appliance manufacturers are accelerating the use of the cutting-edge technology and integrating AI startup DeepSeek's large language models into products and services.

Experts say that AI is not only playing an increasingly pivotal role in boosting productivity and reshaping the competition landscape in the household appliance sector, but is also driving the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing.

This year's Government Work Report stated that under the AI Plus initiative, the nation will work to effectively combine digital technologies with its manufacturing and market strengths, support the extensive application of large-scale AI models, and vigorously develop new-generation intelligent terminals and smart manufacturing equipment.

Sichuan Changhong Electronics Holding Group Co Ltd has adopted DeepSeek's AI models and applied the AI technology into areas such as manufacturing, operations and products.

"We are pushing forward the integration of AI with data and speeding up the industrial use of AI," said Liu Jiang, chairman of Changhong, adding that the company is leveraging AI to inspect the quality of machines and components to facilitate the automation and intelligent upgrading of equipment and improve the efficiency of production lines.

Changhong has also unveiled plans to establish 66 AI-powered intelligent factories worldwide, and has rolled out AI televisions equipped with LLMs that support multimodal interaction functions including voice, gesture and expressions.

Gree Electric Appliances, a major Chinese home appliance manufacturer in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, has embedded its own proprietary model frameworks into DeepSeek R1 and plans to build an industry-specific AI model based on DeepSeek.

Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of Gree, said the company will bolster the deeper integration of image and voice recognition and other AI technologies with home appliance products, and expects the application of AI in air conditioners to contribute to energy conservation.

According to research firm iResearch, the market size of China's smart home industry is expected to rise to 952.3 billion yuan ($131.65 billion) in 2025, while the overall penetration rate of AI technology in smart home devices is expected to exceed 50 percent between 2022 and the end of 2025.

Zhou Yunjie, chairman of home appliance giant Haier Group, said AI models tailored for the smart home domain represent key infrastructure supporting the transformation of the traditional home appliance sector and could give rise to in-home service robots, creating new growth drivers for the global consumer electronics industry.

The company has promoted the application of AI in a wide range of fields like smart living and industrial internet, while its self-developed vertical models have access to DeepSeek.

Hisense said its Xinghai large model has a deep integration with DeepSeek, and with enhanced deep thinking and reasoning abilities, its smart TVs could better understand user demands and provide them with a more natural interaction experience.

According to market research company CCID Consulting, China's AI industry will make big strides in the next 10 to 15 years, with its market size expected to reach 1.73 trillion yuan by 2035, accounting for 30.6 percent of the world's total.

"The meteoric rise of AI technologies will offer better human-machine interaction capacities, and speed up the digital and intelligent transformation of China's home appliance industry," said Liu Fei, research director of the consumer electronics department at Beijing-based market consultancy All View Cloud.

Zhu Keli, founding director of the China Institute of New Economy, stressed the need for enterprises to improve computing power by establishing high-performance computing centers and elevating algorithm design to boost the utilization efficiency of computing power.

More efforts should be made to step up research and development investment in AI, especially in core technologies in key fields, establish a data security and privacy protection system, and strengthen the training of high-caliber AI talent, said Zhong Zheng, vice-president of Midea Group.