[“Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign]
[People posing by sign]
[“Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign]
[Las Vegas Strip, New York-New York Hotel & Casino exterior]
[Statue of Liberty on New York-New York exterior]
[New York-New York logo]
[US flag]
[Las Vegas Convention Center exterior]
[Android-branded monorail driving by]
[“All On” CES poster]
[Samsung “AI for All” poster]
[“Scenario -Driven Future Tech” sign]
[CES logo]
[Convention center interior, workers walking by]
[CES logo]
[Erica Johnson, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, speaking]
Erica Johnson (interview): “CES is the most important technology trade show in the world, and CES is also really significant to the Las Vegas convention industry as well. And that’s in both size of the footprint of the show and how much space it comprises, but also the number of attendees that it draws. This year, CES organizers are sharing with us that they anticipate more than 130,000 attendees, more than 3,500 exhibitors. So, that’s huge. And also more than two million square feet of meeting space will be comprised throughout the destination. So, that’s a huge footprint and a huge boon for our economy here in Las Vegas.”
[Workers walking by]
[Workers walking past CES “All On” poster]
[Workers looking at smartphones]
[CES logo]
Erica Johnson (interview): “We know that Asia was one of the last areas of the world to lift travel restrictions after the pandemic. We don’t know exactly what our international numbers will show quite yet. That is something that our LVCVA research department publishes data on at the end of each year. We anticipate getting those numbers closer to February. Anecdotally, however, we can share that the organizers of our global trade shows like CES, for instance, are telling us that international travel to their conventions continues to increase from areas all over the world. And that includes Asia. So this week, here at CES, CES organizers are telling us that a third of their attendees will be from international.”
[Las Vegas Strip, traffic]
[Lion statue on MGM Grand Hotel exterior]
[MGM Grand hotel exterior]
[Tropicana hotel exterior, seen between trees]
[New York-New York logo]
[Andrea Nepori, technology expert and analyst, speaking]
Andrea Nepori (interview): “This is going to be the CES of artificial intelligence, whatever that means, because we’ve seen that artificial intelligence, especially with generative artificial intelligence in 2023, was like every headline. And now this year, we’re going to see how companies are going to – let me use the term – milk that cow, because we’re going to see if they can really take that and bring it to consumers as value in their products. And honestly, personally, I’m still a bit skeptical. We were expecting the same at IFA back in September. I’m waiting to see what’s going to happen here at CES. But so far, it seems there’s a lot of announcements and we’ve still got to see the meat.”
[Staircase, traffic]
[Statue of Liberty on New York-New York exterior]
Andrea Nepori (interview): “CES has been more and more an automotive show. This year, we don’t have Stellantis, for example, they’re not going to be here. We still have some news lined up. We’re waiting to see what Honda is going to do. They said they’re going to present a new line of EV, global EVs, we’re going to see what that means. We’re going to have Hyundai that is going to even show, from what I’ve heard, an aero taxi done from one of their startups and moonshots. We’re going to see a lot that goes in the direction of more smart, intelligent cars getting into the end of consumers and hopefully more affordable EVs will be the talk of town. So, I’m expecting a lot of small news, interspersed with bigger announcements. My top two would be to watch Hyundai and Honda. But also BMW is here, Mercedes-Benz. There’s going to be a lot of chat around that topic and a lot of it going to be around EVs. And again, I’m going to say, AI is going to improve the car experience.”
[Las Vegas Strip]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.