The annual Consumer Electronics Show, commonly known as CES, loves spectacle. In the past, it was digital satellite systems beaming sports games live to a television, and consoles that brought video games out of arcades and into people’s homes. These days, robots are dancing, screens are curving, and virtual assistants are holding conversations with humans. It’s a sight to behold. But rarely do these gadgets fundamentally change the way we live our lives. Often, the most impactful technologies aren’t the ones that bring shock or delight, but the ones that have become so integrated that they are nearly undetectable. They become quiet.
AI—considered by many as the most significant innovation in decades—is poised to do just that. The transformation is already taking place. While walking the floor of this year’s show in between speaking sessions and booth demos, EY Americas AI & data leader Traci Gusher noticed the difference between last year’s show and 2026.
“Last year, AI was everywhere, but mostly as an accessory—like a feature or a demo that happened to have an AI use case attached to it” she says. “This year, we're seeing a meaningful shift toward more products that are AI-native from the start."
That shift is what is making industry-level change happen. EY Consulting itself brought 15 different speaking sessions to the show this year, focusing on where this shift is, and where it can go, from rethinking road safety as cars become more autonomous and logistical infrastructure is built, to the practical realities of connected living between AI-powered consumer devices. Gusher believes this is the distinguishing moment between products and technologies that are “bolting on AI” versus “building it in.”
It’s the difference between retrofitted solutions and products designed with AI in mind. For example, Gusher points out, “Last year, it was an AI dashboard. Now what you're seeing are products designed with AI at the center of it.” Artificial Intelligence is being wrapped into technologies and tasks, like a nesting doll, so that you don’t see the AI, but it’s there, for example, inside a washing machine’s programming so it automatically detects a load’s weight, fabric types, and soil levels to select the optimal wash cycle, water usage, and detergent amount, without any user input or buttons being pushed.
But the next phase of truly impressive (read: useful) transformation with AI will be even less overt, according to Gusher.
“To move beyond a use case to scale, you have to move beyond the technology,” she says. That’s where most organizations get stuck. There aren’t many products that have gotten there that we’ve seen at the show just yet. I think we'll see more and more of it next year, but it’s about more than just technology.”
She likens it to building a house, where there are separate blueprints for each individual system: the plumbing, the HVAC, the electrical. But the genius isn’t in any single system—it’s in how each of them harmonize together. When all these components are designed well, they come together to work seamlessly, creating a well-functioning house that you trust as your home.
Apply the metaphor to organizations implementing AI, Gusher explains, this moment requires a clear shift: to truly thrive with the technology, organizations must think about rebuilding, not renovating. This stage of adoption demands more than layering new tools onto existing ways of working. Achieving consumer-scale trust requires a willingness to get uncomfortable and accept that some things need to be redesigned from the ground up. While the technology itself is essential, it’s the surrounding layers—people, data, governance, and customer experience—that ultimately make AI dependable, scalable, and ready for everyday use.
Recent research from EY Consulting has found that 96 percent of organizations are seeing some amount of AI-driven productivity gains, but there is a steep drop off between those experimenting with the technology and those scaling it organization-wide, with only 14 percent saying they have fully implemented agentic AI. “The beauty of AI is it makes us all builders,” she says. “The organizations that will thrive in the future will not simply look at how they can operate differently with AI, but how AI can help them do different things."
If companies can do that, Gusher believes that the result will be technology debuting at many CES shows to come that doesn’t blow minds as much as it transforms lives.
“AI is going to be part of the normal DNA of how you think about new products coming to market,” she predicts. “It will become like the cloud. It’s everywhere, you’re always using it, but no one talks about it.”
She believes this shift is coming. Once companies begin building AI-native from the ground up, “The conversation,” she says, “will shift from productivity gains to entirely new forms of value creation."
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The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.
