Third-party sensors and lights can be triggered by the Amazon automatic lighting feature

Proactive Management in the Smart Home with Generative Artificial Intelligence and Assistants: A Key Role of the APIs in a Smart Home

There is a new capability to respond to many requests at once. It’s not only the basics that it could already do, such as turn off the lights and lock the door. This is advanced. “You can say, ‘Alexa, turn on the sprinklers and open my garage door, and turn off the outside lights,’ and it’ll figure that all out,” says Limp.

GenerativeAI has looked like their best chance at survival for a while. Digital assistants have always had part of artificial intelligence, but they have lacked more human-like interactions and complex processing abilities. This is a big moment for the smart home, as it could take home automation to the next level, moving it from a remote control experience to a home that’s, well, actually smart.

“When you connect an LLM to the real world, you want to minimize hallucinations — and while we think we have the right systems in place … there is no substitute for putting it out in the real world,” says Limp. You can register to join the preview by telling your device, “Hey, let’s chat.”

Unsurprisingly, this superpowered Alexa may not always be free. Limp said that while Alexa, as it is today, will remain free, “the idea of a superhuman assistant that can supercharge your smart home, and more, work complex tasks on your behalf, could provide enough utility that we will end up charging something for it down the road.”

The newAlexa gives you the option to say, “I’m cold” and theassistant will turn up the temperature on your thermostat. Or, as Limp explained, “Say, ‘Alexa, make this room feel like the Seahawk colors,’ and it’s going to know what room I’m in and what the Seahawk’s colors are and make those translations between APIs.”

The key to it is the APIs, that is what Limp says. A lot of the smart home API was funneled into our LLM. With this data and knowledge of which devices are in your home and the room you’re in, it will provide context to more proactively manage your smart home.

It is similar to how many smart lighting apps allow you to program lights based on the time of day, ambient light, and activity, if you have the right hardware. The advantage here, though, is there’s no programming required in the app at all, and you get a wider compatibility with lights. Any lights that work with Alexa will work with automatic lighting, and that’s basically all of them.

The multiple command feature only works with a few device types at first, like lights and smart plugs. But the team is working toward adding everything.

GE Cync-Like Light Bulb Control: What You Need to Know Before You Set Up a Lightbulb in the App Store

Dynamic controller will allow features to be surfaced more naturally. So, if you have GE Cync-colored light bulbs and say, “Alexa, make it look spooky in here,” Alexa will know what to do without you having to program a Routine or import scenes to the Alexa app.

Amazon claims to have worked with many manufacturers on these features, and is opening the program to more developers. Amazon hasn’t provided details on how or when developers will gain access to these tools; we’ve reached out for clarification.

Amazon Echo smart speakers are getting a new feature soon: automatic lighting. It can be hard to set up smart lighting, which is one of the most popular use cases. With this new capability, Amazon is looking to make it as easy as just buying and screwing in a lightbulb.

While it doesn’t require any setup, automatic lighting can be customized. The level of brightness that causes the lights to turn on can be specified, as well as the time of day and the lights that will control.

Amazon Featured Routines for the Ring App (Delta v1.0) and its Compatible Smart Doorbells, Alarms, and Locks

Amazon is also bringing its Featured Routines to the Ring app. These are prepopulated Alexa Routines designed to show users how to get the most out of their devices. Previously only offered in the Alexa app, Amazon is bringing them to the Ring app based on your Ring devices.

The Routines will work with all Ring devices, including lights, alarms, and doorbells. It will also support non-Ring devices that are compatible with Alexa, such as smart lights and locks.