Appliance industry kicks off ‘AI Plus’ race, with smart homes drawing attention at two sessions

The "AI Plus" initiative has come under the spotlight at this year's annual sessions of China's national legislature and the top political advisory body, with some lawmakers from the home appliance sector sharing their insights and proposals during this year's two sessions.

The government work report this year has pledged to further promote the "AI plus" initiative in 2025, recognizing AI as essential for fostering new quality productive forces, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

It outlined efforts to effectively combine digital technologies with China's manufacturing and market strengths, support the extensive application of large-scale AI models and vigorously develop new-generation intelligent terminals and smart manufacturing equipment, including intelligent connected new-energy vehicles, AI-enabled phones and computers, and intelligent robots, according to the government work report.

Against this backdrop, many home appliance companies have delved deep into the AI field, ramping up the integration of large models and applying AI across diverse sectors, from enhancing user experience in product interfaces to optimizing manufacturing processes.

Chinese home appliance giant Haier has designated 2025 as the first year of its full AI implementation. The company has widely applied AI technology to its smart home, healthcare and industrial internet sectors, the Global Times learned from Haier Group on Tuesday. In early February, Haier's self-developed smart home large model, HomeGPT, and its self-developed industrial model were quickly integrated into DeepSeek.

Zhou Yunjie, a deputy to the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), also chairman of Haier, put forward a motion on building a smart home large model with high-quality data to help upgrade the home appliance and furnishing sectors, according to a statement sent by Haier Group to the Global Times on Tuesday.

Large models in the smart home domain serve as the crucial infrastructure for the transformation and leapfrogging of traditional smart home appliances and furnishings. They have the potential to spawn new-quality consumer goods industries that lead globally, such as home service robots. This can stimulate the upstream and downstream industrial chains to generate new growth points exceeding 10 trillion yuan ($1.38 trillion), Zhou said in his motion.

Zhou said that bottlenecks remain in industry data processing, including high data collection costs, challenges in cross-domain integration and limited training data. To overcome these challenges, it is crucial to develop the data collection industry, create a unified data source for smart home large models and construct national-level data simulation platforms and training grounds.

Zhong Zheng, an NPC deputy and vice president of Midea Group, told the Global Times on Tuesday in a statement that the Group was an early adopter of AI and has already made significant strides in this transformation.

For example, the company's AI-powered "factory agent" is a system that can make decisions independently based on data, which has significantly improved production efficiency. It has been successfully applied in areas such as quality management. On the home front, the company's "home agent" -- another AI-powered system -- can autonomously detect and respond to consumer needs, providing personalized services and intelligent decision-making to enhance the overall living experience, Zhong said.

AI-powered home appliances are set to drive a new wave of consumer upgrades, offering greater intelligence, personalization and seamless interaction, Chen Jing, a vice president of the Technology and Strategy Research Institute, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Consumer demand for smart homes will rise significantly, making intelligence the key competitive factor in home appliances. Amid government efforts to boost consumption and trade-in programs, AI models will play a key role as advancements in smart appliances will attract more consumers to upgrade, driving market expansion, Chen added.