Attention Labs Secures CES 2026 Picks Recognition for Group-Aware AI
Voice-based AI has improved dramatically at generating responses, but it still struggles with a basic social function: knowing when to speak, when to stay quiet, and who a response is meant for. In shared environments with multiple people talking at once, this limitation has kept conversational AI from behaving naturally outside of controlled, one-on-one interactions.
United States, 16th Jan 2026 —At CES 2026, Toronto-based startup Attention Labs was named a recipient of the CES Picks Awards by TechRadar Pro, following a live demonstration of artificial intelligence designed to operate within multi-person conversational environments.
The demonstration featured an unscripted interaction in which an AI system, embodied within a robotic platform, participated in a group conversation by continuously assessing which individual to attend to, determining when a response was appropriate, and deliberately withholding responses when it was not. The system ran entirely on-device, without cloud inference. It was tested under conditions that included background noise, overlapping speech, and spontaneous dialogue.
The demonstration comes as AI systems increasingly move beyond text prompts toward agentic and ambient behavior across devices. As assistants expand into desktops, homes, vehicles, and robots, the ability to participate appropriately in group conversations has emerged as a foundational but largely unsolved technical challenge.
Handling group conversation remains a persistent challenge for conversational AI. Most systems are designed around single-speaker assumptions and explicit turn-taking, which limits their effectiveness in shared environments. Attention Labs’ approach centers on selective attention, enabling the system to prioritize speakers and conversational relevance dynamically and in real time.
The CES presentation was delivered in collaboration with Hugging Face, demonstrating how attention-based interaction architectures can be integrated with contemporary AI tooling and deployment workflows.
The CES Picks Awards highlight technologies selected by TechRadar editors for technical execution and real-world applicability. Attention Labs’ inclusion places the company alongside a mix of emerging startups and established technology firms exhibiting at the event.
Following the demonstration, the company said it is in early discussions with device manufacturers and platform partners exploring deployments across consumer and edge-based environments where AI systems must operate locally and coexist with multiple users.
For more information, visit https://www.attentionlabs.ai
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Company Details
Organization: Attention Labs
Contact Person: David Joohun Kim
Website: https://www.attentionlabs.ai
Email: Send Email
Country: United States
Release Id: 16012640217