For the longest time ever, our refrigerators pretty much served one purpose: to keep our food and drinks cold. But clearly as technology advanced, companies started to come up with new ways to reinvent the wheel. At CES 2026 , Samsung has done just that with an update to its Family Hub smart refrigerator, which now comes with voice activated door opening and closing.
Samsung refrigerator now supports voice commands
Opening and closing the door of your fridge isn’t a big deal. But we get it, sometimes your hands are full or dirty. Or maybe you have some kind of health or medical condition that makes it hard to use your limbs. In that case, the new Samsung refrigerator could be useful thanks to its voice command capabilities .
By leveraging Samsung’s own Bixby virtual assistant, users can now command their fridges to open or close using their voice. They just need to say command phrases like “Shut the fridge door,” or “Open the door,” and it will do it for you. We’re also not talking about the door opening by a small fraction. It will open the doors completely, making it easy for you to grab items or put items back when your hands are full or dirty. Users also have the option to tap the door with their palm or back of their hand to activate it.
But that’s not all
In addition to gaining new voice commands for opening and closing the doors, Samsung ’s update brings additional AI smarts. According to Samsung, the Family Hub line of fridges will also get some Gemini features . There is also a built-in AI Vision feature that allows the fridge to recognize what you’re putting in or taking out.
This will come in handy for shopping lists, where if an item is gone, you can mark it down to replenish it later. It’s also useful for meal planning and to cut down on food waste. We have to admit that these features are kind of novel. If anything, it just means that there is a higher chance of things failing or not going the way it should.
Either way, if you think that a smart fridge will be a great addition to your home, then maybe this is an update worth checking out. Samsung hasn’t confirmed pricing or availability yet, but don’t expect it to come cheap.
