‘The end of housework is in sight’


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Miele used IFA 2026 to make a bold prediction: the end of housework is in sight. From AI-powered cooking and dishwashing to a washing machine that wants to do the thinking for you, Will McGill looks at how the manufacturer plans to take more everyday decisions off consumers’ hands.


I


f there was one thing in particularly plentiful supply at IFA this year, it was AI. It was on televisions, ovens, washing machines, dishwashers and just about anything else manufacturers could find space to stick the letters on.


Miele, however, arrived in Berlin wanting to


have a slightly different conversation. Rather than asking what else AI could do, the German manufacturer posed a simpler question: what if our appliances just gave us fewer things to think about?


That thinking sat behind Miele’s rather bold


IFA 2026 message: “The end of housework is in sight.” And during its press conference, the manufacturer attempted to show what that could actually look like across cooking, dishwashing and laundry care. Dr Reinhard Zinkann, Executive Director and


Co-Proprietor of Miele, took the story back considerably further than AI. Next year marks 100 years since Miele entered electric floorcare with its Melior vacuum cleaner, while its first electric dishwasher followed in 1929. Automatic detergent dispensing arrived decades later, followed by AutoDos and PowerDisk for dishwashers and cameras inside ovens. For Dr Zinkann, there is a fairly obvious line running through all of it.


“At first, appliances made physical labour


easier; then they took over more and more tasks and processes,” he told those gathered at IFA. “And today, it is increasingly about the decisions behind them.”


Miele illustrated that idea using a fictitious


100 decisions consumers might make around the home each day. The actual number was deliberately made up, but the point was not: deciding which wash programme to use, how much detergent is needed, what temperature to cook something at or whether the dishwasher is full enough all require some thought.


Miele increasingly wants the appliance to do that thinking instead. “Our customers shouldn’t have to be experts


in programmes, AI, settings or features,” Dr Zinkann said. “The expertise must increasingly lie within the device itself.” There is, however, a catch. “The more technology takes over, the more important one prerequisite becomes,” he added. “Trust.”


What’s for dinner?


The first attempt to demonstrate that philosophy came in the kitchen. Dr Markus Miele, Executive Director and


Co-Proprietor, introduced CulinaryCoach, an AI- based assistant within the Miele App designed


to turn an idea for dinner into the appropriate settings for a Miele oven.


Consumers can type or speak to CulinaryCoach, or give it an image. Ask how best to cook a piece of salmon, for example, and it can recommend the preparation method before sending the operating mode, temperature and timer directly to the oven. Perhaps more interestingly, Markus Miele demonstrated how the technology could deal with something decidedly less digital: an old handwritten family recipe. Take a photograph of it and CulinaryCoach


can interpret the instructions and translate them into a preparation method suitable for the user’s appliance. “Such recipes


are more than cooking


instructions,” he said. “They are a piece of family history.”


It can even work backwards from a photograph or a vague memory of something eaten on holiday to suggest a suitable dish. Of course, there are already plenty of general-


purpose AI assistants capable of suggesting what to make for dinner. Miele’s argument is that its advantage lies in knowing the appliance at the other end.


“The CulinaryCoach knows the oven, its


programmes and its capabilities exactly,” Dr Markus Miele explained.


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