Talk to Your Home From Your Desk — Today
The AI assistant on your computer can now connect to your smart home. Here's what that looks like in our founder's house, the limits we build in, and the network protection that comes with it.
Last week we shared how our founder's home, full of different smart-home brands, runs as one system, and that the next step was simply asking for what you want. That step is here.
Your AI assistant, connected to your home
Home Assistant, the system that ties the house together, now lets an AI assistant on your computer connect to it directly. Once it's set up, you can ask "what's still on in the master bath?" or "turn off the lights upstairs" in plain words, without knowing what anything is called.
You sign in with your own Home Assistant account, and you can disconnect the assistant at any time. It only sees the devices you choose to share.
Talking to it out loud, through the wall panel and through small listening devices around the house, is coming next.
What we never let it touch
Door locks and garage doors aren't shared with the AI at all. It can't unlock what it can't see. We also keep the equipment that runs the house, like the internet router and security recorder, off its list, so a misunderstood request can't knock the house offline.
Kids' internet, handled
- Grounded means grounded. Grounding a child also turns off the internet on their computers, and so does bedtime. Updates and antivirus still get through.
- School laptops stay on task. School laptops can get their own network that only reaches the school's learning site.
- Phones and tablets keep using their built-in screen-time controls, and TVs keep their own curfews.
A network that guards itself
Every Wi-Fi network in the house is watched. A device the network has never seen is blocked the moment it joins, and the homeowner gets a notification to allow it or keep it blocked. There's no list of device addresses to keep up to date. And if a child learns the password to another network in the house, their laptop is still blocked there.
We can set this up in your home
We do it the same careful way every time: tidy up names and rooms so the AI understands your house, decide together what it may and may not control, connect your assistant (you sign in, we never see your password), and test it with you watching.
The full story: Describe It, Part Two.