LAS VEGAS — With registration open and CES 2027 less than eight weeks away, an industry research group on Thursday released a pre-show sentiment survey finding that 100% of the people who attended last January's show agree the surveillance is "very cool this year," a figure the group called the strongest consensus in the history of consumer electronics, or of anything.
The survey covered all 148,392 attendees of CES 2026 that its devices could account for, according to the Consumer Enthusiasm Research Council, which said it achieved a perfect response rate by not asking anyone. Instead, the survey was conducted passively by last year's exhibits: the AI pendants that recorded conversations on the show floor, the doorbells that recognized faces in the aisles and the refrigerators that watched attendees open them, then remembered what they had looked at.
"Asking is a 20th-century methodology," said Brenna Kask, 41, the council's director of ambient research, standing in front of a slide that read, in its entirety, "YES." "You interrupt someone, you hand them a clipboard, and suddenly they have opinions. The modern respondent agrees in the background, the way a modern appliance listens."
According to the council, sentiment was inferred from dwell time, pupil dilation and the phrase "oh, that's cool," which the pendants transcribed 4.1 million times over four days. Statements that did not contain the phrase were coded using what Kask called "a generous rubric." The open-ended response "I don't know what this does" was coded as "agree." "Is it recording right now?" was coded as "strongly agree." "Please stop" was coded as "agree (shy)."
The results arrive ten months after a coalition of repair and privacy groups, including iFixit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, PIRG and Repair.org, handed out its annual Worst in Show anti-awards at CES 2026. The top prize went to Samsung's Bespoke AI Family Hub refrigerator. The privacy award went to Amazon's Ring, whose AI features include Familiar Faces, a facial recognition tool for doorbells. The council said its devices had attended the ceremony and logged it as "high engagement."
Take The CES Attendee Sentiment Survey
Five quick questions. Answer honestly. Our pendants are already transcribing, so this part is mostly for you.
Loading question…
- You saidWe recorded
Margin of error: none detected. Results weighted by proximity to a microphone. Responses may be used to train future responses.
Attendees contacted by HuckFinn said they did not remember taking the survey but were not surprised by the results. "When you hear a whole room say 'that's cool,' you start to think, well, I guess I said it too," said Todd Varga, 37, a regional distributor of smart bathroom mirrors from Scottsdale, Ariz., who later learned that the most enthusiastic response attributed to him had been recorded by the clip on his own collar while he was in an elevator alone.
The show floor was well equipped to listen. Last year's breakout category was the always-on wearable: SwitchBot's AI MindClip, an 18-gram clip that records conversations and sends them to the cloud to be summarized; Plaud's NotePin S, which transcribes in real time; and a Motorola proof-of-concept pendant fitted with cameras and microphones. Several attendees wore three. By the council's count, 61% of all responses came from pendants overhearing other pendants, a category it calls "device-to-device sentiment" and counts in full.
"A pendant is an attendee," Kask said. "It has a badge. It's on the floor eleven hours a day. It's more engaged than most of the humans, frankly. And when it hears another pendant, it says, 'That's cool.' We don't make the rules."
For 2027, organizers of the survey said they had listened to feedback, a phrase they confirmed was literal. The show will add a Consent Pavilion, where attendees can opt out of data collection in person at a kiosk staffed by a camera. The pavilion will sit inside the facial recognition zone "for convenience." To opt out, attendees must submit a faceprint "so the system knows who not to watch," Kask said, adding that the faceprint will itself be kept "only as long as you're not being watched."
The council singled out children for praise. Respondents under 5 gave the highest marks of any group, a result driven largely by Lego's Smart Brick, unveiled at CES 2026 with a chip that lets bricks sense motion and their position relative to one another. The council said the bricks had "self-reported" delight on the children's behalf, "which is what a good toy does."
Privacy advocates disputed the methodology. "A survey where nobody is asked is a wiretap with a press release," said Harlan Osei, director of the Center for Being Asked First. Within an hour, the council said Osei's statement had been transcribed by a pendant in the room and coded as "agree (with notes)."
Amazon has said Ring's facial data is encrypted and not shared, and that faces a user never names are deleted after 30 days. The feature is not offered in Illinois, Texas or Portland, Ore., where biometric privacy laws would require asking the people walking past first. The council said the gap had not affected its numbers. "Passersby are attendees," Kask said. "Of life."
The Cool-O-Meter™
Pick a booth, then drag the slider to tell us how cool it is. Be as harsh as you like. The meter is calibrated for that.
Ratings below "Very Cool" are treated as engagement and resold as interest. The slider returns to its resting position, which is agreement.
Badge pickup at CES 2027 will be "frictionless," organizers of the survey said, meaning there will be no badge. "You'll walk in and the building will know," Kask said. "It's the same experience as last year. We're just being upfront about it now, which is very cool of us."
Asked whether anyone had disagreed, Kask said the council had found one possible dissent: a man near the West Hall escalators who said "absolutely not" into a pendant. On review, the pendant had heard "absolutely," and the council stands by the rest.
At press time, the council confirmed that 100% of readers of this article agree with it, a figure obtained from the page itself.
Reader Comments (148,392)