Amazon, Google, and Samsung are all working on an exciting way to bring AI to smart homes – and Apple risks being left behind.
Samsung is first to launch the new feature: the ability to use natural language to simply tell your smart home app what it is you want it to do …
Samsung Smart Things is effectively the Korean company’s equivalent of HomeKit. All compatible devices can be controlled through a single app on the company’s smartphones, in exactly the same way the Home app can be used on iPhones.
Currently, configuring a new automation in Apple’s Home app isn’t a very user-friendly experience for non-techy users. What Samsung has just announced, and The Verge reports is available now in its app, is a Routine Creation Assistant to automate scene-creation.
This lets you type a phrase describing what you want your home to do in the SmartThings app — like “turn off all the lights whenever I leave the house” — and it will set it up without you needing to configure each device or setting.
While that particular example is easy enough to do in Apple’s Home app, as there’s a specific “when the last person leaves home” trigger, other routines can be trickier for normal people.
For example, I have a timed automation for when I start work. This closes my office blind, switches on lighting to a cool color temperature for concentration, and switches off lights in other rooms.
Configuring this required me to create a scene, add accessories, specify their state, and then create an automation to activate that scene at a certain time on certain days (I do it this way so that I also have the option of manually activating the scene). For someone who isn’t used to the kind of flow and logic involved, creating this kind of thing can definitely be intimidating.
If Samsung’s app lets you create arbitrary automations as easily as telling the AI what you want, that’s a huge step forward in making smart home tech appealing to mass-market consumers.
And it’s not just Samsung: both Amazon and Google are already beta-testing exactly the same type of natural-language functionality. So pretty soon, Apple – once the leader in making smart home tech friendlier – could be the only major platform not to offer this.
Another area where Samsung is pulling ahead is by adding time delays.
Another update to SmartThings routines is the option to schedule multiple timed steps using a Delay Actions feature. For example, Samsung says, “Users can now create a ‘Good Morning’ routine that turns on bedroom lights at 7:00 a.m. [and] starts the coffee maker 15 minutes later.”
I’ve often wanted that ability, for example a goodnight routine that switches on the bedroom lights and turns off the rest, but waits 30 seconds before switching off the hallway lighting to show the way to the bedroom.
Finally, Samsung also lets you opt for a notification you tap to confirm you want something to run, which could be useful where you can anticipate potential clashes between timed automations and manually-activated scenes, depending on things like when people get up in the morning.
Shortcuts would be one way of doing this kind of thing, but that’s a lot clunkier than being able to do everything in one simple app. Apple has some catching up to do here.
Photo by Đức Trịnh on Unsplash
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