AI, flying taxis, bendable phones: The tech that defined 2024

From artificial intelligence (AI) at the Olympics to some of the first test flights (and falters) of air taxi companies, 2024 was a memorable year in tech. 

Euronews Next had a front row seat to cutting-edge innovation in all these fields at some of the biggest tech events this year. 

We break down some of the best of the new tech we’ve seen this year. 

A big year for tech in sports

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games featured new technological innovations like AI on and off the field. 

From an AI chatbot that protected athletes from cybercrime to an AI-generated 360-degree replay of an athlete’s performance, and an AI-assisted platform to monitor energy consumption, the Paris Games rolled out new technologies in full force. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) even launched a technology to determine future Olympians: a booth that analyses a user’s strengths and weaknesses to see how well the participant does in 12 sports, such as football, running, and table tennis. 

New technologies were also used behind the scenes at the Games, including the controversial use of Cityvision, an AI software program that detected abandoned objects and crowd movements from surveillancefootage. 

Brian Gumbel, president of AI event-monitoring company Dataminr, wrote in an opinion piece for Forbes that the technological advancements made in threat detection and sport during the Paris Games “will serve as a blueprint for future global events,” like the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. 

AI makes inroads in cars

Outside of the Olympic Games, AI was integrated into all kinds of consumer tech this year. 

Euronews Next was on site for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January when Volkswagen announced two of its cars, the ID.7 electric sedan and Golf GTI would use ChatGPT as part of its onboard voice assistant.

In Volkswagen’s model, drivers can ask the car to turn the air conditioning on, ask it how to entertain loud kids in the backseat or find the best place for butter chicken after a day at work. 

Other companies like Germany’s Audi and Mercedes-Benz, France’s Peugeot, and the Czech Republic’s Skoda have also added ChatGPT voice assistant to their cars. 

Throughout the year, we saw more innovative ways that AI was being built into the driving experience. 

Chinese manufacturers took over the Paris Motor Show with some of the first uses of AI behind the wheel. The most exciting for car enthusiasts was the P7+ from XPeng, which they describe as the world’s first “AI-defined” vehicle that learns from drivers’ preferences on the road and will make autonomous decisions to become a mobile butler. 

Another model was Stellantis’ Leapmotor B10, a crossover SUV that uses internal software that will have “advanced driver assistance,” a digital cockpit, and intelligent driving.

The flight and falter of air taxis

2024 was supposed to be the year of the air taxi, but the models seen by our team at Euronews Next didn’t end up taking flight like promised. 

One company, Germany’s Volocopter, said at Vivatech in Paris that it started test flights on its electric flying taxi ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics. If all went to plan, Volocopter would have launched its two-seater electric aircraft, the VoloCity, to carry passengers around during the Games. 

Instead, the company failed to borrow €100 million from the German government to get their taxis permanently off the ground, which could mean the manufacturing could move to China, according to the BBC.  

In the meantime, other air taxi companies showcased their tech at different shows, like Hyundai’s four-passenger battery-powered vehicle at CES or Joby’s air taxi, which was exhibited for the first time at the Farnborough Air Show in London. 

Joby’s craft is the closest to taking off in Europe now with the fall through of Volocopter, because the UK gave the company its license earlier this year and should start commercial operations sometime in 2025. 

Another robotaxi that made a splash this year was Tesla’s Cybercab, unveiled at an event in California in October. The model has no steering wheels or pedals, and will instead rely on cameras and AI for navigation. 

The cab should cost less than $30,000 (€27,000) when it hits the market in 2026. 

Smartphones and smart glasses

2024 was also the year that consumers saw some innovative takes on the smartphones and smart glasses of the future. 

Meta made a splash at its annual Connect conference this year with the launch of the Orion augmented reality glasses that can project digital representations of people and communications in the real world.

The glasses let users send a signal from your brain to the device using a so-called “wrist-based neural interface” that translates nerve signals into digital commands.

The social media giant also updated its Ray-Ban sunglasses with more AI features, like reminders and live translation.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Meta’s glasses. The company faced some backlash after two Harvard students found a way to rig their Ray-Ban glasses to do facial recognition in public settings.

Our team saw new “bendable smartphones” at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. 

Motorola and Lenovo’s phones can bend around the wrist or stand unsupported so users can “stay connected while on the go,” a press release from the company says. 

The phone screens of the future are tougher, too, like Samsung’s foldable OLED displays on its phones at CES. 

Those displays can weather everything from extreme temperatures at -20 to 60 degrees Celsius, to basketballs bouncing on its panels and can withstand “military standards,” Samsung said. 

Euronews Next also saw Skyphone, a hardy satellite phone that can survive under a metre of water for 10 minutes. It’s also one that keeps you connected at sea, in the desert, or the mountains, because it doesn’t rely on terrestrial networks for signal.