27-05-2025
Your Google Smart Home Is About To Get Smarter
Google natural AI language alerts from Nest Cams
Google is taking a big step toward making your smart home feel, well, smart, by baking in Gemini AI into the Home APIs that developers use to build their own apps and devices.
Announced during Google I/O 2025 last week, the move means third-party developers will be able to bring Gemini-powered features such as AI security camera summaries, natural-language routines, and proactive automation suggestions into their own smart home apps.
It means that, even if you never open the Google Home app, you could still benefit from all that AI brainpower behind the scenes.
Brands such as Wyze, Ring and Roborock and Govee have introduced their own AI features in the past few months, but the move from Google means their devs could potentially offload this sort of stuff to Gemini within the Home APIs.
At I/O last year, Google first launched the Home APIs and gave a few early partners access to its software and we've already seen the likes of ADT, Yale, Cync, iRobot and Motorola take advantage.
Since then the ecosystem's grown from 600 million to over 750 million supported devices, with Matter giving that number a boost as it's grown in popularity.
One of the more headline-grabbing features from the new AI smarts is the rollout of Gemini-powered capabilities for Nest Cams; the same ones Google started testing in the Home app last fall.
Developers can now bring live view, event history, two-way talk, and camera settings into their own apps, but also take things further with AI-generated summaries and searchable video history.
So you could ask something like:'Did anyone open the back door last night?' and get a relevant clip in return.
That same functionality could land in apps like ADT's or even other home security platforms using the Home APIs, without requiring Google's own UI.
Google is also trying to fix one of the smart home's biggest pain points of complex routine setup.
With the new Gemini-powered features in the Automations API, developers can offer natural language-based automation tools that let users just say what they want: 'Turn on the garage light when I walk in there,' and let the system figure out the rest.
It's similar to the natural language prompts that have arrived with Amazon's Alexa+.
Gemini will also proactively suggest useful routines based on what devices are in the home too, potentially surfacing ideas for automations that users wouldn't have thought of on their own.
Google says that the new Gemini-powered APIs will roll out to a small group of early access partners later this year. You'll need to sign up the Developer Newsletter if you want be among the partners.
Gemini-powered experiences are already showing up in public preview on Nest Audio and Nest Mini speakers for users with a Nest Aware subscription, offering deeper context and more natural back-and-forth control.
With a revamped Siri set to launch later this year - potentially with new Apple smart home hardware - and the AI supercharged Alexa+ already rolling out, it's going to be fascinating to see how the evolution of the smart home revolution plays out.
