Samsung’s Ballie Home Robot is Finally Rolling Out This Summer, and It’s Now Powered by Google Gemini AI

After years of hype and a few carefully orchestrated demos, Samsung’s Ballie the home robot is finally hitting the market. Starting this summer, U.S. customers will be able to bring the ball-shaped bot into their homes, with pre-registration now live on Samsung’s official website.

Originally introduced as a concept back in 2020, Ballie has slowly evolved from a futuristic idea to a fully-fledged product. Designed as a smart personal assistant, the robot rolls on two wheels, takes voice commands, and now, thanks to a major partnership with Google, boasts some serious AI under the hood.

Samsung confirmed that Ballie is powered by Google’s Gemini multimodal AI platform, allowing it to understand audio, visual, and environmental inputs all at once. That means it can see, hear, and sense what’s happening around your home—and respond accordingly. On top of that, it also runs on Samsung’s own generative AI models, giving it a unique dual-AI setup aimed at making the robot feel more intuitive and helpful.

“Ballie is designed to actively support users in everyday life,” Samsung explained in a product update. “With AI, it can learn your habits and provide customized services based on your lifestyle.”

And yes, it talks back. Not just in robotic commands, but with actual, thoughtful suggestions.

Tell it you’re tired, and it might suggest ways to improve your sleep, track your rest with connected devices, or even dim your smart lights to create a calming atmosphere. It can also project videos, calendars, or even mood lighting onto the wall, thanks to its built-in projector and speaker system.

In a demo at CES 2025, The Verge’s Chris Welch watched Ballie recommend a bottle of wine for dinner and project a recipe on the wall, all while the user interacted through voice and projected buttons on the floor. Still, it’s worth noting that all public demos so far have been heavily choreographed, and journalists have yet to interact with the robot freely.

Style-conscious users will also get a kick out of Ballie’s fashion feedback. According to Samsung, the robot can visually assess your outfit and offer accessorizing tips. Whether or not you’ll take fashion advice from a glowing robot ball is another matter, but it’s certainly a feature no other home assistant has offered.

This launch comes at a pivotal time. As smart home technology matures and AI becomes more accessible, companies are betting big on robots that do more than just vacuum. Meta is reportedly developing a humanoid robot, Google has ongoing robotics research, and Apple is rumored to be building something similar. LG, one of Samsung’s biggest competitors, introduced its own smart home robot last year.

But Samsung may be first out of the gate with a consumer-ready model. However, we have yet to find out how much Ballie will cost us.