Samsung just staked its claim on the AI race with a bold vision of AI as a daily companion. Two days before CES 2026 officially kicks off, the electronics giant held The First Look 2026 press conference in Las Vegas, unveiling a strategic push to embed AI across its entire product lineup. The move signals how aggressive Samsung's becoming in positioning itself as the company that brings artificial intelligence to everyday people, not just tech enthusiasts or enterprises.
Samsung Electronics just made its CES 2026 move, and it's all about AI. On January 4th, two days before the official show floor opens, the company held The First Look 2026 press conference at the Wynn Las Vegas. The timing's strategic. By going early and going big on AI positioning, Samsung's signaling that this isn't some afterthought or feature add-on. This is the company's central narrative heading into the biggest consumer tech event of the year.
The headline is simple but loaded: "Your Companion to AI Living." It's Samsung's way of saying AI isn't this distant, technical thing anymore. It's supposed to be your everyday buddy, helping with convenience, care, and joy. That language matters because it's deliberately human-centered. We're not hearing buzzwords about computational power or model sizes. We're hearing about how AI fits into real life.
What Samsung's really doing here is doubling down on democratization. The company made a point of emphasizing its commitment to integrating AI across its product lineup and services. That's the key differentiator. While competitors debate whether AI belongs on phones or in the cloud, Samsung is taking a different approach: put AI everywhere. Your TV, your phone, your refrigerator, your washing machine. Make it ubiquitous enough that it becomes unremarkable.
This move puts Samsung in direct territorial competition with both Apple and Google. Apple has been hesitant on AI, keeping things cautious and privacy-focused. Google is embedding AI deeper into Android and services, but Samsung controls the hardware experience across its ecosystem. That's leverage. Samsung gets to decide how AI looks, feels, and behaves across devices most people actually own.
The company's also positioned this moment smartly from a narrative standpoint. Rather than announcing individual products right away, Samsung dropped the strategic vision first. It's a classic move: set the expectation that everything you're about to see over the next week is connected to this larger vision of AI companionship. It means when they announce a new TV, or phone, or household gadget, the context is already there.
