Every year, thousands of product vendors, journalists, and gadget enthusiasts gather in an unreasonable city to gawk at mostly unrealistic products.
To be of service to our readers, Ars has done the work of looking through hundreds of such items presented at the 2025 Consumer Electronic Show, pulling out the most bizarre, unnecessary, and head-scratching items. Andrew Cunningham swept across PC and gaming accessories. This writer stuck to goods related to the home.
It’s a lie to say it’s all a prank, so I snuck in a couple of actually good things for human domiciles announced during CES. But the stuff you’ll want to tell your family and friends about in mock disbelief? Plenty of that, still.
AI-powered spice dispenser: Spicerr
Part of my job is to try and stretch my viewpoint outward—to encompass people who might not have the same experiences and who might want different things from technology. Not everybody is a professional writer, pecking away in Markdown about the latest turn-based strategy game. You must try to hear many timbres inside the common voice in your head when addressing new products and technologies.
I cannot get there with Spicerr, the “world’s first AI-powered spice dispenser,” even leaving aside the AI bit. Is the measurement and dumping of spices into a dish even five percent of the overall challenge? Will a mechanical dispenser be any more precise than standard teaspoons? Are there many kinds of food on which you would want to sprinkle a “customized blend” of spices? Are there home cooks so dedicated to fresh, bright flavors that they want their spices delivered in small vials, at presumably premium prices, rather than simply having small quantities of regularly restocked essentials?
Maybe the Spicerr would be a boon to inexperienced cooks, whose relatives all know them to under-season their food. Rather than buying them a battery-powered device, they must charge to “take the guesswork out of seasoning,” though, you could … buy them good cookbooks, or a Times Cooking subscription, or just a few new bottles of paprika, oregano, cumin, cayenne, and turmeric.
