Voice control is perhaps the most advanced and most growth-potential control medium, and the recent influx of investments into AI is fueling more natural language interactions with voice models, creating a more seamless and intuitive way for consumers to interact with their smart home systems.
The smart home industry as a whole seems poised for a glut of advanced, generative AI models coming into the mix.
To state the obvious, voice is the most convenient way of controlling smart home systems as, when it comes to intuitiveness, there isn’t much that’s more intuitive than speaking. Operators don’t need to use a smartphone, tablet, or wall controller and then search through rooms and devices to find what they want to command.
That’s why Big Tech companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google are replacing their existing voice assistants with more sophisticated, context-aware models that can do more than just dim the lights or find a movie.
What’s different for the CEDIA channel, however, is the emphasis on user experience rather than user data.
Lightapalooza took place in late February, and the growth of the event has mirrored the rapid ascension lighting fixtures and controls.
Smart home control provider Nice, for example, released its own voice assistant in December that does not collect any user data. Instead, it is solely focused on helping users more easily control their home systems.
“Its sole purpose is to provide a great user experience for managing your home,” says Paul Williams, managing director of the home management business unit at Nice. Williams had spoken with CE Pro back in October 2024 on how the company had been leveraging AI to improve its platform, among other topics.
The self-developed voice model–named Mylo–also allows users to simplify how they use their voice to control devices on the Nice platform. Users won’t need to specify exactly what device they want to control based on what it is called in the system.
In addition, the voice model is context-specific and will know where the user is, so they don’t have to tell the AI to focus on a specific room.
Although Williams focuses on Nice’s own voice assistant, the industry at large has been releasing similar features in voice assistants.
One exciting example of how voice assistants are leveraging new generative AI models is the ability to create custom scenes and automations using simple language. Many voice assistants offer the ability for users to say things like “Dim the lights slowly at 10 p.m. and lock the doors,” or “Turn on the front door lights when there is motion in the driveway.” This doesn’t require any programming knowledge or technical know-how — just a voice.
According to Williams, this can help integrators’ relationships with customers. Instead of having integrators program scenes that a homeowner grows to dislike, the homeowner is empowered to create those automations themselves in an extremely intuitive way.
“Now it’s there and the dealer didn’t have to do anything,” Williams explains. “The consumer didn’t have to open up any app or type anything in. With just their voice, they could explain what they wanted to do, and the system has enough intelligence to using some AI in there as well to go, ‘Okay, I know what you’re trying to do. Here’s a lighting scene.’”
Many say the industry is poised to truly benefit from maturing advancements that make intelligent systems indistinguishable from human interactions.
What’s key to making the user experience worthwhile — and to convincing users to give it a chance — is ensuring a high-quality experience. This means the hardware, such as speakers and beamforming microphones, needs to be equally high quality.
According to Williams, this technology is evolving to be able to single out specific voices in noisy environments. With advancements in AI, assistants should soon be able to learn user voices to eliminate the issues that arise for those with heavy accents.
The smart home industry is ripe for an AI transformation, with voice at the center of that revolution, helping make control of smart homes easier and helping customers unlock more value from their connected home.
“Voice and AI are really the next chapter of the connected smart home,” Williams says. “This is where the smart home needed to go and it’s where it’s headed with AI.”
This article is part of our coverage for the Top 5 Home Technology Trends of 2025. To see a list of all the trends we see affecting integrators in the new year, follow the link to the article above.
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