SwitchBot had a few AI-powered devices on display at IFA 2025; not just a furry little robot pet (I picked it up and it’s not cuddly). They included an E Ink AI art display, which generates AI art on demand, an AI tennis robot that you can “play” matches against, and a couple of robot vacuums. We’ll get to all of that, but the main thing that caught my eye was the SwitchBot AI Hub.
It’s not that the others aren’t interesting—of course they are—it’s that I love good, easy automation. The promise of the AI Hub is two-fold: it can access SwitchBot’s Vision Language Model (VLM)—such models can interpret visuals and text at the same time—enabling natural language prompts that you can use both for setting up automations and searching connected security camera footage for events they recorded to its internal storage. It only supports SwitchBot’s cameras for now, although the company says that could change later.
Some examples include asking the AI Hub, via the SwitchBot app, when you left your phone somewhere in your house or when your dog got out. You can also set it to trigger automations based on events it identifies, like alerting you that your dog escaped. As for that local storage, the AI Hub comes with 32GB, but that’s expandable up to 1TB using a microSD card slot on one side or one of the USB-C ports on the back.
Unfortunately, automations using the AI Hub will cost money as you’ll need a subscription to a cloud plan that the company will debut in October, according to a SwitchBot rep. They told me pricing is yet to be set. The AI Hub works with more than 100 devices and supports Matter if you have a Matter Bridge device. It can also connect to a display and show you the real-time streams from up to eight 2K-resolution SwitchBot cameras.
Now, about the AI art frames. These use E Ink Spectra 6 color displays, and at least under the bright lights of the IFA show floor, they’re very convincing as art prints. They come in 7.3-inch, 13.3-inch, and 31.5-inch sizes, last up to two years on a charge, and are compatible with Ikea frames, so you don’t need to just use the ones they come with.
As for what the display shows, it’s, well, AI art. That means you can describe art you’d like to see, using the SwitchBot app, and it will show it on the frames. You’re gonna be looking at art that’s an approximation of something a human created, which was very obvious when I saw the frames—both were clear simulacrums of Vincent van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear,” and “The Starry Night.” Neat, but personally, I’d be a lot more interested in paying a subscription to a service that just puts the actual paintings on my E Ink screen.
Finally, the Acemate Tennis Robot. It’s like a standard tennis ball-firing robot with a net for you to aim at, except it can roll around the court to catch your balls and simulate another player returning them by firing another ball at you. The company says this machine “uses dual 4K binocular cameras and advanced AI algorithms to track serves, returns, and rallies with centimeter-level accuracy.” It can predict where your ball is going and drive to it at up to 5 meters per second, responding within 0.15 seconds.
The demo space the company set up for this was… less than ideal. It was cramped and flanked by loose netting that kept catching on the Acemate’s wheels. But even in such an awkward environment, it did a surprisingly good job swinging around the court to try to catch the balls (sometimes even successfully!) that were batted at it by a human tennis demonstrator at the other end. When each ball reached it, another ball would fly out of the bottom almost immediately. It was convincing, and I could definitely see using this thing to practice if you have no friends to play with.
SwitchBot says the Acemate serves (pun not intended) as an AI tennis coach, capturing info about ball speed, spin, net clearance, and placement, then gives you feedback using the Acemate app for iOS and Android phones. The company even integrates the Apple Watch to compare biometrics data to statistics from matches played with the robot.
The Acemate can run for up to three hours at a time and holds 80 tennis balls. You can tweak how it plays, from setting up to 20 target zones to adjusting its spin and speed to suit your ability.
SwitchBot did not reveal pricing or availability for any of the products. I’ve asked the company, and we’ll update when we know more.