What you need to know
- Google announced a new generative AI-powered feature for its smart home.
- The new tool allows users to create their own customized automation on Google Home.
- The tech giant noted that the feature will be available on Google Home’s web app later this year as part of its Public Preview.
Google’s smart home is now jumping on the generative AI bandwagon with a new feature that allows Google Home users to build customized routines.
In a new company blog post, the tech giant announced the launch of a new “help me script” feature for Google Home’s script editor. The AI-powered feature allows users to build more advanced automations.
“When you’re creating Routines in Google Home, you might want to add some extra bells and whistles — like having your lights turn on as soon as you step out of bed, or getting an announcement on your smart speaker when your camera detects a package delivery," Google says in the announcement. "So we recently launched a script editor, which lets you write and edit code to build more specific, custom automations for your household.”
Although users write and edit their own code to create the automations, the feature allows users with little to no coding experience to use the script editor.
The chatbot UI lets you enter a prompt such as the following: “When the smoke alarm goes off, flash all the lights in the house and announce an emergency over the speakers.” The AI-powered tool will then generate the code for you, which you simply copy and paste into the script editor.
The best part about the feature is that it cleverly uses generative AI to allow anyone, regardless of their coding prowess, to interact with Google Home’s script editor in a completely natural way.
While Google says that the “help me script” feature is powered by a language learning model, it doesn’t specify which one. Nevertheless, the company highlights that the feature is “constantly learning and improving, generating more accurate and personalized scripts every day.”
The company notes that the feature is coming to Google Home’s web app as part of its Public Preview later this year.
