Claude AI Revives Abandoned Samsung Washer's Smart Features

After roughly two hours of AI-guided work, the owner recovered the smart-control features and re-established communication between the washer and its matching dryer. According to the post, the machine now works like new, with program, temperature and spin-speed management available again from SmartThings.

A tool for other owners

The author published the result on GitHub as a project called smartthings-samsung-drc-washer. It lets older models integrate with SmartThings through an Edge driver. Available functions include viewing the washer's status and remaining time, starting and pausing cycles, and several configuration options. The goal is to keep running models that Samsung left out of its current ecosystem once their support period ended.

The owner said they paid a premium for the machine at the time, citing a touchscreen, automatic detergent dosing and internet-based smart control. Because they already used other Samsung products, they chose to save the appliance rather than replace it.

A growing trend, and a controversy

The case adds to a wave of projects in which people use Claude and ChatGPT to modify or restore devices, including efforts to strip bloatware, ads and tracking from smart TVs. Samsung and LG have both been accused of embedding spyware in their sets, and users are looking for ways to reverse it.

That has caused friction. OpenAI and Anthropic have suspended some accounts for violating their terms of use. A researcher who compromised Tizen on a Samsung TV lost account access and all credits after OpenAI said analyzing vulnerabilities and building exploits to bypass the TV's security amounted to cyber abuse.