Samsung wants Twitch streamers to buy its new oven

Samsung’s Bespoke AI Oven has a trick up its sleeve hinted at by its name: the company says you can put food in it, and it will automatically recognize what you’re asking it to cook, and recommend the appropriate temperature, time, and mode. Part of its smarts even include “burn detection,” according to a press release, with EU models having the ability to warn you that your food is getting overcooked.

The in-wall oven can recognize “80 different dishes and ingredients” via an internal camera, though you can also use a 7-inch touchscreen to manually adjust settings and check the status of your cook. The company notes that the European model is capable of recognizing 106 dishes — which, given that it calls out burn detection as specifically an EU feature in a footnote, it does sound like you’ll want to check what features the oven has in your region before picking it up.

That internal camera isn’t just for the AI to use. Samsung says you can even livestream the view from inside your oven to social media (the company’s fact sheet says this is “great for content creators and avid chefs who want to share their dishes”), take pictures of your food as it cooks, or just use it to check your bake without having to open the oven’s door.

By the way, if you’re like me and are wondering how you even would even do that given the door’s lack of a handle, the answer is that it’s push-to-open. I’d definitely have reservations about the reliability of that kind of mechanism, but more importantly I’m not sure where Samsung expects you to hang an essential (but admittedly not aesthetically pleasing) kitchen towel.

The Bespoke AI oven has several modes, according to Samsung, including air fryer, steam cooking, dual temperature zones, and even something called “air sous vide.”

While this isn’t the first oven that promises to recognize and cook your food — the June Oven did a similar thing in a counter-top form factor, and other companies like Bosch are working on their own AI ovens — Samsung does have the power of an ecosystem and a brand consumers recognize. The company says you can connect it to Wi-Fi and use its SmartThings Cooking platform to set timers, preheat the oven, and view the camera stream from your phone. It also integrates with Samsung Health to “analyze users’ workout stats and diet goals to recommend meal options.”

The company says the oven will launch in the US and EU in Q3 2023, but there’s no word on pricing yet.