Artificial intelligence was on the tip of the tongue this week at CES, the annual technology extravaganza formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show. From Samsung's Neon avatars and LG's smart washing machine, to Intel's Tiger Lake processors and the gun-detecting PATSCAN, AI seemed to be everywhere. Samsung's research subsidiary, STAR Labs, unveiled its latest AI project, called Neon. Similar to a chatbot, Neon generates a photo-realistic digital avatar that interacts with people in real time. The South Korean technology giant plans to weave the Neons into people's day-to-day lives, where the avatars will play the role of doctors, personal trainers, and TV anchors giving you the evening news.

The bathroom of the future has been revealed at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show, which predicts the augmentation of skincare and toileting with smart tech. Among the devices debuting at the Las Vegas-based show is a mirror that scans your face, a personalised cosmetic dispenser and a smart scale disguised as a bath mat. Meanwhile, Amazon's Alexa has truly arrived in the bathroom, appearing in conventional fittings from toilets to shower-heads. With their latest product, L'Oréal is bringing to the bathroom of the future the level of beauty personalisation normally reserved for high-end salons. The artificial intelligence-powered Perso device -- which stands at 6.5 inches (16.5 centimetres) tall -- uses a four-step process to deliver at-home cosmetics and skincare tailored to the user that are further refined as time goes by.

A robot cat designed to ferry plates of food to restaurant customers has been unveiled at the CES tech expo in Las Vegas. BellaBot, built by the Chinese firm PuduTech, is one of a number of wacky robotic inventions being shown off at the event this year. There is also UBTech's Walker, which can pull yoga poses. It speeds a roll of toilet paper on demand to bathrooms that have run out of the stuff. One expert said it was likely that robots exhibited at CES would only continue to get more bizarre in the future. BellaBot, the table-waiting robot cat, is a service bot with personality.