The Five Weirdest AI Inventions I Saw at CES 2026 ...Middle East

AI is still the big thing in the tech world, but it's no longer the big new thing. It's been around long enough that simply integrating it into your product isn't enough to make it stand out anymore, especially at the biggest tech show in the world. While I attended this year's CES, the trend I noticed over and over again on the show floor was that AI is getting weird now. From personal hologram sidekicks to a gaming monitor that basically cheats for you, here are the five weirdest AI inventions I saw at CES 2026.

Razer is giving you your own personal anime girl

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

In Razer's suite this year, I held a conversation with "Kira," an anime girl "hologram" that lives in a little USB tube you can plug into your laptop. She noticed my orange sweater thanks to a camera installed in the tube, before asking me about the show and prompting me to start up a round of Battlefield 6, where she gave me some generic loadout advice. I spoke with her using microphones also built into her tube, and she responded using her own speaker rather than the laptop's. Razer said this demo was more directed, hence why she brought up gaming right away, but that the end goal is to let the new AVA work as a convincing all-purpose AI companion, so you don't have to use it for only play.

While we were chatting, Kira played animations courtesy of Animation Inc., which powers similar but more app-driven AI companions. In other words, the chatbot and the animations aren't really new here, so what you'd be buying would be the USB tube and the characters.

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Razer said it's still working on figuring out how it'll distribute these characters, and I was told you'd get a bundle of them with your purchase, but would probably be able to buy more down the line.

In short, if you strip away the functionality that's already baked into apps you can download now, the new Project Ava is basically a talking hologram toy for your desk. That's still not a bad pitch, but unfortunately, I'm not sure if hologram is the right word for this. Kira looked pretty flat to me, less like that one Princess Leia projection and more like she was displaying on a normal transparent screen that just happened to be stuck inside of a cylinder. I don't think the novelty quite matches the pitch yet.

The gaming headset that uses AI to read your mind

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Essentially, it looks like a normal gaming headset, but built into the earcups are various sensors that can supposedly read your focus levels. These are similar to the brain-computer interfaces you might have seen in sci-fi shows, the ones with a bunch of wires and discs attached to them, but shrunken down for the consumer market, with no creepy wires in sight.

For gamers, that means it can run you through a quick focus exercise called "Prime," where you concentrate while noticing a cloud of dots shrink into a solid orb. Once this is done, which took about 90 seconds for me, you're supposedly focused up and ready to play.

Unfortunately, I actually did worse in a practice shooting game after focusing than beforehand, but that doesn't mean the data was useless. I ran through the exercise with a colleague whose score improved by maybe about a third after focusing, and with such a small sample size, there could be any number of reasons I choked after focusing up. The company said that it could even be helpful to practice choking in this way.

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

That said, it'll be a while until you can actually buy this. It's still a concept for now, with no pricing or promise of release. However, Neurable does already have a similar, non-gaming headset made with Master & Dynamic that will be shipping out soon, just without this software. For more, read my full article here.

Lenovo's laptop can nod when you ask it a question

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Essentially, while I talked with the app, the laptop displayed a big pair of animated eyes on screen, and used its hinge to nod or shake its head no when I asked it questions. It also displayed small animations in response to certain questions, like showing an umbrella when I asked about the rainy weather.

It's still very early days, but I was impressed that the hardware was able to recognize what an affirmative answer was and trigger the laptop to respond accordingly. A lot of AI feels pretty disconnected from the real world, so anything that can give it a physical presence is probably a good idea if you want people to take it seriously.

The Lenovo AI gaming monitor that's basically cheating

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

For instance, in a demo showing a MOBA game (think League of Legends), the monitor zoomed in on the map. In a demo showing Counter-Strike 2, it zoomed in on the reticle. Personally, I didn't think getting a blown-up look at the map was all that helpful, but being able to constantly see what was essentially a sniper scope around my reticle was a game changer, since it worked with any gun and made targets much easier to see.

I could see Counter-Strike 2 developer Valve go as far as banning this if it ever makes its way to market, since it's taken similar actions before. But this is still just an idea for now. Still, it shows that companies are starting to figure out concrete ways AI can help you in your games, beyond just feeding you advice you probably already know.

XREAL's new AR glasses can automatically convert any 2D content into 3D

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

When I used it to play Mario Kart World, I would have believed you if you told me Nintendo had added this mode itself. It also worked great with James Cameron's Avatar, and there was no loading time to set it up or turn it off. There also wasn't any fuzziness, like there might be with glasses-free 3D screens like the 3DS.

The only issue you might come across is in content that doesn't have depth. For instance, XREAL's Ralph Jodice told me the software didn't quite know what to do when he tried playing the original 8-bit Super Mario Bros. with it, and would randomly emphasize only certain game assets without any rhyme or reason. An illusion of depth does seem to work, though. Super Mario Bros. is entirely flat, but when I tried watching the pen-and-paper animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with this technology, it correctly separated characters in the foreground from scenery in the background, even though everything on screen was entirely hand-drawn.

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