‘I can’t believe it’s already broken’: Samsung customers are complaining to the company over spoiled food after an update bricked AI smart fridges

More than a century ago, Hollywood legend Buster Keaton directed and starred in The Electric House, a silent film in which a home abundant with rewired electrical gadgets causes chaos for its visitors. But what was a short comedy of yesterday has become a prescient depiction of a contemporary problem: smart appliances that aren’t acting smart.

Samsung customers flooded an online community with dozens of comments this week about issues they’ve experienced with certain models of their not-so-smart AI-powered smart refrigerators. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Samsung Electronics’ online community forums were filled with dozens of posts from “Samsung Members” claiming their refrigerators became inoperative following a firmware update from the company’s smart home platform “SmartThings.” The customers reported that following the update, refrigerators went offline, with internal lights not turning on, and cooling and freezing mechanisms not working. 

“Samsung told me to update, so I did, but it broke down,” one user wrote in a post translated from Korean to English. “The meat and everything else is about to spoil. Where can I get compensation for this, and when is the refrigerator going to be fixed? I bought this this spring, and I can’t believe it’s already broken.”

The glitch........

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