A refrigerator has one job you really don’t want interrupted by a software update. For some Samsung owners in South Korea, though, an update left their fridges unable to keep food cold.

The trouble began Sept. 22, when customers installed refrigerator software through Samsung’s SmartThings app. Owners reported dark interior lights, screens stuck on an “updating” message, and fridges that had stopped cooling. The affected models were reportedly mostly Bespoke AI four-door refrigerators released since 2024.

The timing made a bad situation worse. Chuseok, a major Korean holiday centered on family gatherings and food, was about to begin. One owner told Seoul Shinmun they had thrown away 20 kilograms of food; others worried about meat and other groceries they had bought for the holiday.

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Samsung acknowledged the problem on its community forum, saying an error during software testing had caused power and screen problems for some customers. According to South Korean reporting, software meant for internal testing was mistakenly sent to customers. Samsung stopped distributing it, offered free repairs, and aimed to restore affected refrigerators by Sept. 24. The company said it was still reviewing compensation for spoiled food. It has not publicly confirmed how many fridges were affected or whether every repair was completed by that target date.

The outage raises a question that goes well beyond Samsung. Fridges can recognize food and suggest recipes. LG sells washers that detect fabric types and adjust the cycle. Dyson’s new CameraJet toothbrush even uses a tiny camera and AI to find the gaps between your teeth. Some of those features may be genuinely useful.

But Samsung’s fridge failure shows what’s at stake when the software inside an everyday appliance goes wrong: you might lose the basic thing you bought the appliance to do in the first place.