Samsung’s fridges now recognize family members by voice

Samsung’s latest smart fridges now support multi-voice recognition powered by the company’s Bixby assistant, which can be used to bring up personalized information on the built-in smart displays based upon which member of a household is speaking.

Voice identification in smart home tech is nothing new, but with no successful Samsung-branded smart speaker line of its own, connected appliances are Samsung’s only real route to apply that kind of personalization.

The main perk is that the fridge will be able to display your calendar or personal photo gallery using only voice commands. You’ll also be able to ask the fridge to trigger an alarm on your phone, useful if you can’t find it. The update may be more helpful for those who are hard of vision, as it will automatically change the fridge screen’s display mode to match settings like color inversion or grayscale that have been applied on your phone.

Samsung is also adding a new way to activate Bixby on its fridges. In addition to tapping the Bixby icon or using voice commands, you’ll now be able to double tap on the fridge’s display while it’s off to bring the beleaguered voice assistant —no longer the default even on Samsung’s own phones — to life.

The Voice ID feature and double-tap gesture are arriving now in an update for Samsung’s Bespoke AI fridges with Family Hub (the company’s term for its larger smart home screens), starting with the 2025 models, and will later roll out to appliances with the smaller AI Home displays.