Samsung's $1,800+ Smart Fridges Now Show Ads, and You Can't Turn Them Off

Imagine buying a premium television for thousands of dollars, only to have the manufacturer push a software update that fills your screen with commercials. Now imagine that same logic applied to every appliance in your home, your washing machine, your oven, your refrigerator. The device you paid a premium for suddenly becomes another billboard competing for your attention.

That dystopian scenario is no longer hypothetical. Samsung has confirmed it's rolling out advertisements to its Family Hub refrigerators in the United States, specifically, the models that cost between $1,800 and $3,500.

According to Android Authority, the company began pushing a software update in mid-September that introduces what it calls "promotions and curated advertisements" to the refrigerator's touchscreen display when idle. Samsung issued a statement confirming the pilot program:

Samsung is committed to innovation and enhancing every day value for our home appliance customers. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the U.S. market.

The statement continues:

Advertising will appear on certain Family Hub refrigerator Cover Screens. The Cover Screen appears when a Family Hub screen is idle. Ad design format may change depending on Family Hub personalization options for the Cover Screen, and advertising will not appear when Cover Screen displays Art Mode or picture albums.

Samsung notes that users can dismiss individual ads, which won't reappear during that campaign period. What the company doesn't mention is an option to disable advertisements entirely, which seems like a reasonable expectation when you've spent enough on a refrigerator to cover several months of groceries.

Here's the interesting part: Just five months ago, Samsung's head of R&D for digital appliances, Jeong Seung Moon, told The Verge that the company had no plans regarding the inclusion of advertisements on AI Home screens and that any future policies will be guided first and foremost by what best serves our customers' needs.

The internet had thoughts:

To be fair, Samsung's current ads appear on the idle screen rather than blocking access to your food. But the jokes write themselves when you consider the trajectory here.

The greentext prophecy hits a little different when Samsung is already deploying AI Vision Inside technology that can recognize food items in your fridge and make recommendations.

This isn't Samsung's first rodeo with controversial advertising practices. In 2015, the company faced backlash for inserting ads into users' locally stored content on Samsung smart TVs, including third-party servers. And this latest move fits into Samsung's broader "Screens Everywhere" philosophy, a corporate vision that now apparently includes every idle moment in your kitchen.

The pilot program raises a straightforward question: At what price point does a product become expensive enough that you shouldn't have to watch ads on it? Because if the answer is "somewhere north of $3,500," we might want to start checking whether our high-end washing machines are about to pitch us detergent during the rinse cycle.

Samsung says the future of this program depends on pilot results. Translation: if enough people accept ads on their premium appliances without returning them, expect this feature to roll out across more products. The company has already expanded screens to its washers, dryers, and ovens. The infrastructure for kitchen-wide advertising is already in place.

The most revealing detail might be what Samsung chose to call this: a program to enhance everyday value for customers. One has to wonder: When did we collectively agree that the value of our expensive appliances increases when they show us ads?