While flashy chatbots often steal the spotlight, generative AI has the potential to truly simplify and enhance smart home experiences. Following Amazon’s announcement of a more intelligent Alexa, Google has now stepped up with its vision for a smarter, more helpful Google Assistant.
Ahead of its fall hardware event, Google has unveiled three new Gemini intelligence-powered features for the Google Home platform, set to launch later this year. These innovations include a new camera intelligence feature that provides descriptive captions for Nest camera footage, natural language input for creating Google Home routines, and a more advanced Google Assistant for Nest smart speakers and displays with an entirely new voice.
However, most of these features, aside from the new voice, will be part of the Nest Aware subscription, which starts at $8 a month ($80 a year). Initially, these features will be available to a limited number of Nest Aware subscribers through Google’s Public Preview beta program, with a broader rollout planned for next year.
“This sets the path for the next era of Google Home,” Anish Kattukaran, head of product for Google Home, told The Verge. For long-time Google Home users, who have dealt with aging smart displays and a cumbersome transition from the Nest app to the Google Home app, this is promising news.
The recent launch of the Google TV Streamer 4K (a Google Home hub) and a new Nest Learning Thermostat, combined with the promise of a more intelligent Google Assistant, signals a bright future for Google Home users.
Rather than simply transplanting Gemini onto Nest speakers and smart displays, Google is integrating Gemini intelligence behind the scenes. “Gemini is a family of models, and we’re optimizing it for elements of Google Home,” Kattukaran explains.
Smarter Security Camera Alerts
Google is leveraging Gemini intelligence in Nest cameras to enhance their understanding of what they see and hear, providing detailed descriptions of events. Instead of generic alerts for a person or package, users will receive detailed descriptions of what the camera observed. These models will learn and improve over time, providing smarter, more contextual insights.
For example, a camera might generate a caption like:
“A young person in casual clothing, standing next to a parked black SUV. They are carrying grocery bags. The car is partially in the garage, and the area appears peaceful.”
Such detailed captions offer valuable context and could lead to smarter home automation. If a camera detects an animal, it might describe the situation as “the dog is digging in the garden,” prompting an automation to “turn on the sprinklers.”
Additionally, users will be able to search through footage using text in the Google Home activity tab. This feature can be particularly useful, such as when looking for the last sighting of a pet that has wandered off.
Home Automation Made Easier
The new “Help me create” feature in the Google Home app simplifies home automation. Users can describe what they want, like “lock the doors and turn off the lights at bedtime,” and the app will create the routine automatically.
This feature, available through text or speech input on the Home app, provides access to all current Google Home app capabilities, including starters, conditions, actions, and connected devices, even those using the Matter protocol. While not as sophisticated as Google’s script editor, it makes automation accessible to all users.
Google Assistant Grows Up and Gets New Voices
In addition to enhanced automation and camera intelligence, Google is improving the core functions of Google Assistant, such as playing music and setting timers, across all current Nest smart speakers and displays.
Google Assistant is also getting new voices with different styles, tones, and accents. A demo released by Google showcases the first new voice, which retains a female tone but sounds lighter and more natural.
The new Google Assistant will not only sound more natural but will also communicate more naturally, handling pauses and informal speech, and answering follow-up questions. While an in-person demo was not available, these features seem similar to those announced by Amazon for Alexa last fall.
According to Kattukaran, the new Google Assistant will maintain the context of conversations and learn to understand your home. The Gemini-powered capabilities will run in the cloud, adhering to Google’s privacy principles.
“It is specific to your home and your data models. We’re being very intentional about going slow. In the home, the margin for error is very low; we can’t mess up,” he says. The goal is for the models to build an understanding of your home — such as the rooms and devices you have — and then build on that baseline to become smarter over time.
These updates are designed to bring the digital voice assistant closer to the vision that Google and its competitors have been striving toward for years: a genuinely helpful digital assistant.
The Next Era of Google Home
“When we started out with that first-gen assistant, the promise was The Jetsons; the vision was an ultra-helpful assistant that could proactively help you figure things out,” Kattukaran reflects. “We made a bunch of progress, then it plateaued — across all the assistants, not just us. We hit a technological ceiling. That’s been raised with LLMs and language models that are more multi-modal.”
As Kattukaran points out, “The home is a beast.” It’s a complex and dynamic environment, making it a significant challenge for AI. However, with Amazon, Google, and Apple all racing toward a future where homes have intelligent, context-aware assistants, the advancements in this space will be fascinating to watch.
Google’s integration of Gemini intelligence into Google Home marks a significant step toward creating a more intuitive and responsive smart home experience. As these technologies evolve, they promise to bring us closer to a future where our homes can anticipate and respond to our needs seamlessly.
