The Engadget CES 2025 team has mostly arrived in Las Vegas, where we'll be covering tech's biggest annual conference. Our war room is open, the team has been seeing products and the coverage will ramp up in just a few short hours. Still, the show doesn't officially kick off for a couple of days, since the convention center is only truly open on January 7. But we'll have plenty of press conferences to cover tomorrow, and companies are already holding somewhat secretive briefings to preview their news. Based on our experience, as well as observation of recent industry trends, it's fairly easy to make educated predictions about what we might see here.

Samsung is the 800-pound gorilla of CES, a global electronics giant that produces mobile devices, TVs and home theater products and kitchen appliances -- just to name a few. It's traditionally used CES to remind the world that it's a major competitor in all those arenas, while offering a peek behind the curtain of some more cutting-edge tech, too. In 2024, for instance, Samsung's CES press conference covered all the usual iterative updates -- new TVs, new projectors, new soundbars -- but also offered up some genuinely futuristic product first looks as well. And while we won't see the transparent MicroLED screens at the local Best Buy anytime soon, you can already buy the Music Frame speaker that was first shown off at CES 2024. But it's the Ballie robot, a two-time CES veteran, that we're most hoping will make a return appearance -- ideally with a real-world release date this time.

An onboard computer watching your every move might sound like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But now, a futuristic superyacht plans to use AI to learn what you want before you even realise it. Just like HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi classic, the ship's computer will spy on its passengers to learn more about their desires. Designed by the Italian shipyard Rossinavi, the 43-metre-long Solsea will use that information to tailor itself to the needs of individual guests. Rossinavi says that this onboard AI has been designed to make travel more comfortable and maximise the yacht's eco-friendly potential.

OpenAI has laid out a plan to revamp its corporate structure next year, saying it would create a public benefit corporation to manage its growing business and ease the restrictions imposed by its current non-profit parent. Rumors have swirled that OpenAI was in the process of shifting to a largely for-profit company, but this is the first time it has detailed the proposal publicly. Under the proposed structure, the public benefit corporation, which is a for-profit corporate entity, will run and control OpenAI's operations and business, while the non-profit will hire a leadership team and staff for charitable initiatives in sectors such as healthcare, education and science. This new structure will give the for-profit arm of OpenAI much more control. In a blogpost, the company said it is "a stronger non-profit supported by the for-profit's success".

General Motors is officially ending its support for Crusie's beleaguered fleet of self-driving "robotaxis." In a surprise announcement this week, the US carmaker said it will "realign its autonomous driving strategy" to end robotaxis and instead focus on eventually creating an autonomous personal vehicle. Cruise, which previously operated as a subsidiary, will now be fully absorbed by GM. That's all a major departure for the driverless car company which had its sights set on offering paid robotaxis rides in multiple cities next year. Cruise previously proclaimed it planned to have close to a million of its autonomous vehicles flooding US streets by the end of the decade.

The rise of various social platforms has transformed journalism. The growing demand for news content has led to the increased use of large language models (LLMs) in news production due to their speed and cost-effectiveness. However, LLMs still encounter limitations in professionalism and ethical judgment in news generation. Additionally, predicting public feedback is usually difficult before news is released. To tackle these challenges, we introduce AI-Press, an automated news drafting and polishing system based on multi-agent collaboration and Retrieval-Augmented Generation. We develop a feedback simulation system that generates public feedback considering demographic distributions. Through extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluations, our system shows significant improvements in news-generating capabilities and verifies the effectiveness of public feedback simulation.

GM is giving up on its Cruise robotaxi subsidiary. The company announced today that it will fold Cruise into its own in-house technical team. Under the new strategy, this single unit will focus for now on developing advanced driver assistance programs, and in the future on fully autonomous personal vehicles. GM acquired Cruise in 2016. However, the robotaxi brand faced intense scrutiny last year after a pedestrian in San Francisco was struck and dragged by one of its driverless cars.

Anyone in the US can now use OpenAI's artificial intelligence video generator, Sora, which the company announced on Monday would become publicly available. OpenAI first presented Sora in February, but it was only accessible to select artists, film-makers and safety testers. At multiple points on Monday, though, OpenAI's website did not allow for new sign-ups for Sora, citing heavy traffic. Sora is known as a text-to-video generator, a tool that can create AI video clips based on a user's written prompts. An example on OpenAI's website has the prompt of "a wide, serene shot of a family of woolly mammoths in an open desert".

OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT and one of the most prominent artificial intelligence companies in the world, said today that it has entered a partnership with Anduril, a defense startup that makes missiles, drones, and software for the United States military. It marks the latest in a series of similar announcements made recently by major tech companies in Silicon Valley, which has warmed to forming closer ties with the defense industry. "OpenAI builds AI to benefit as many people as possible, and supports US-led efforts to ensure the technology upholds democratic values," Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, said in a statement Wednesday. OpenAI's AI models will be used to improve systems used for air defense, Brian Schimpf, co-founder and CEO of Anduril, said in the statement. "Together, we are committed to developing responsible solutions that enable military and intelligence operators to make faster, more accurate decisions in high-pressure situations," he said.

Panasonic Holdings has created an artificial intelligence clone of its late founder Konosuke Matsushita based on his writings, speeches, and over 3,000 voice recordings, the company announced Wednesday. Known as Japan's "god of management," the Panasonic icon is one of the most respected by the Japanese business community, and comes back to life in digital form to impart wisdom directly to those he never met in person. "As the number of people who received training directly from Matsushita has been on the decline, we decided to use generative AI technology to pass down our group's founding vision to the next generation," the company said in a statement. Co-developed with the University of Tokyo-affiliated Matsuo Institute, the model can reproduce how a person thinks or talks. The company aims to further develop the digital clone to help make business decisions in the future.