At CES 2026, AI Leaves the Screen and Enters the Real World

At CES 2026, AI leaves the screen and enters the real world

By Eric Sullivan

Deep in a conference room at the Mandalay Bay complex in Las Vegas, a humanoid robot crossed a preprogrammed wave for a crowd of cellphone cameras — a classic scene of grand spectacle and unclear utility at CES. This is what this show, which is held every January, does best: transforming prototypes into performances that also serve as technological predictions. Although much of what appears here will never emerge meaningfully in the real world, the ideas often do. And at this year’s show, one theme is hard to miss: artificial intelligence is on the move.

Physical AI—the use of automated machines that lift, drive, transport, and operate in the same spaces as humans—is omnipresent at CES, and its creators seem eager to unravel its mythology. For years, the story of robotics presented to the public was one of viral athletics: robot marathons, kickboxing videos. Today, even those who built these humanoids treat them as a distraction. “We were doing ‘YouTube video parkour’ 10 years ago,” Robert Playter, CEO of robotics company Boston Dynamics, said during a CES panel on AI in the physical world. “Hard things are useful work.” In other words: less show, more operations in areas like mining, construction and logistics, where the work is repetitive and expensive enough to justify the high costs of automation.

This step toward pragmatism confronts tech companies with a different obstacle: trust. In the simpler times of 2022, when ChatGPT was new and AI as we know it lived primarily in chat windows, a hallucination was a nuisance. In a driverless car, it’s a different story. “Moving hallucinations can be disastrous,” Jyoti Shah of data processing company ADP said during a panel on AI in the physical world.

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Mikell Taylor, director of robotics strategy at General Motors, said he heard that a Zoox robotaxi recently stopped at a Las Vegas crosswalk and wouldn’t move, leaving pedestrians confused and guessing. Even if it is not catastrophic, the anecdote suggests the urgency of the situation. Physical AI doesn’t just need better sensors; it must be readable, with clues that are easy enough for humans to read. Trust requires robots to be “transparent in their thinking and transparent in their movements,” said Carolina Parada of Google DeepMind, “so people know what to expect.”

The need for ever-better real-time intelligence highlights a less glamorous theme of this year’s CES: computing power. On the hardware side, chipmakers characterize an industry that faces physical limitations. Shankar Krishnamoorthy of electronic design automation company Synopsys said the traditional pace of chip development cannot keep up with what modern designs require. “Customers are demanding monster chips,” he said, “so we need to accelerate innovation cycles by several [times].”

Then there’s the bill. AI that works everywhere, all the time will require massive infrastructure that doesn’t yet exist. The scale and speed of current AI development is already driving increased power consumption and costs, and no amount of chip efficiency can compensate. This is a constraint that no one at CES came here to trumpet, but which governs everything else in a discreet manner.

Ultimately, many of the discussions about AI at CES seem like a familiar story. “I think the innovation is happening – it’s just overblown,” one conference attendee told me. “In many ways this echoes IoT [Internet of Things] 2010 wave.” In other words, some of the hype is real and only time will tell what sticks. The question at this year’s CES is whether physical AI will become another overused label or whether it will become a part of our daily lives. If that’s the case, this Mandalay Bay robot will eventually have to do more than just wave.

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