TL;DR
- At Milan Design Week 2026, Samsung unveiled “Project Luna,” a round-screened AI companion designed to be a “believable” home concept.
- Treading carefully after the Ballie robot’s unfulfilled promises, Samsung is pitching Luna as a design experiment rather than a guaranteed product.
Samsung once promised that its Ballie smart home assistant robot would be in your homes, but quietly walked back on that promise. The company isn’t done with assistant robots, though. Samsung has now showcased its Project Luna AI companion, but, treading cautiously, this is referred to as a concept rather than a promised product.
Project Luna is a round screen with a swiveling head, first spotted in a video Samsung posted about the company’s exhibition at Milan Design Week 2026.
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Samsung shared more details about Project Luna with Fast Company, asserting that it is a concept, albeit a believable one. Project Luna is said to be a dedicated AI companion for your home, one that can fill in the gaps when no other AI devices are around. It is designed to be highly approachable, with playful beeps that are reminiscent of Wall-E.
In Samsung’s demo at the event, Project Luna serves as a conductor for a wider array of Samsung products. It uses a pulsating orb graphic resembling an eye, mouth, and face that serves as a unified UI. This AI persona can effectively “jump” from Luna to a nearby TV, speaker, or projector as needed.
Project Luna isn’t the only AI companion Samsung showcased. The company also showcased a square speaker with an exposed vinyl record spinning on its side, which can come to life with a glowing UI powered by AI and a dynamic EQ.
The rest of the report goes into detail on Samsung’s design vision for the future, especially for products in its AI-centric ecosystem, with key comments from Samsung’s Chief Design Officer, Mauro Porcini. The core of this vision is a shift from “personal AI” (housed on smartphones) to “communal AI” — an intelligence that lives and seamlessly moves across the entire home ecosystem, seamlessly jumping from device to device.
Zooming out, Project Luna appears to be the physical manifestation of Samsung’s strategy to turn home AI from an intrusive, screen-heavy surveillance tool into an ethical, endearing, and helpful roommate that ties together a diverse hardware ecosystem. It remains to be seen if these endearing products actually make it to consumer release. With no promises made, we won’t get a repeat of Ballie, that’s for sure.
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