All articles tagged with #voice assistant
A roundup of five highly rated smart window air conditioners for 2026, all offering Wi‑Fi/app control and compatibility with voice assistants (Alexa/Google Home/Matter), covering 6,000–12,000 BTU options from Midea, GE, Windmill, LG, and Della, with notes on energy savings, installation, and user feedback.
Google is rolling out a sweeping update to Google Home and Gemini for Home that enhances Spotify voice recognition, lets you set exact light color temperatures via voice (e.g., 2700 kelvin), and simplifies broadcast messages, while adding latch control for European-style smart locks and ensuring consistent temperature units. The release also brings Android iOS fixes (HD live streams, camera stability, and billing alerts for Home Premium).
People are ditching Alexa for four reasons: waning interest as generative AI like ChatGPT offers more natural back-and-forth, reliability issues and quirks in Alexa’s responses, unsolicited product pitches in Alexa’s answers since 2022, and privacy concerns about cloud processing and contractor listening, all contributing to a shift away from Echo devices despite efforts like Alexa+.
Lifehacker suggests five practical tweaks to make Gemini behave more like the old Google Assistant: set Gemini as the default across your Google Home/Nest devices, minimize personalization by turning off nonessential connected apps, use Instructions for Gemini to create custom shorthand commands, leverage Scheduled Actions to replace routines, and pick the fastest model (disable Extended thinking) where available for faster responses.
The Google Home Speaker delivers strong, stylish hardware with good sound for its size and features like Matter/Thread control, stereo pairing, and compatibility with a Google TV Streamer, though some features are paywalled and the power cable isn’t removable. Gemini for Home adds impressive conversational ability but remains slow and unreliable for routine smart‑home tasks, with memory issues and subscription gates, leaving it as a great speaker waiting for Gemini to catch up (Alexa Plus remains the more reliable smart‑home option today).
Google rolled out a sweeping update to Google Home and Gemini for Home, delivering 20+ improvements that improve wake-word accuracy and conversation handling, reduce accidental activations, speed up alarms/timers/lists, boost media playback and search, expand Gemini to the whole family, enhance camera descriptions and familiar-face detection, and add better energy alerts and Matter switch support, along with assorted bug fixes and UI tweaks.
Apple says the next-gen Siri powered by Gemini will resist romance or flattery, focusing on helping users and keeping boundaries rather than becoming a manipulative AI partner. The update includes deeper iOS integration and a dedicated Siri app to compete with ChatGPT/Claude, with on-device context awareness and task completion while hiding the tech in the background.
Alexa’s massive installed base isn’t enough to shield it from a shifting AI landscape: data-privacy concerns, aggressive upselling with Alexa+, and the rise of free or cheaper rivals (Gemini/Google/ChatGPT voice features) and open-source options are steering users toward other platforms, making Alexa’s relevance increasingly doubtful despite its long presence in the market.
Security researchers demonstrated AudioHijack, a proof-of-concept that hides covert instructions inside audio—podcasts, music, videos, or Zoom calls—to secretly command AI voice assistants and transcribers to perform actions like web searches, file downloads, or data exfiltration without user awareness. The technique works via tiny, inaudible tweaks that humans hear as normal sound but that AI interprets as commands, and it was effective against 13 open-source audio AIs with 79–96% success in tests, with potential transfer to commercial systems like Microsoft Azure and Mistral AI. Countermeasures such as training or intent verification only partially mitigate the risk, underscoring security implications for enterprise and consumer deployments; Microsoft acknowledged safeguards exist in real deployments.
Amazon's Alexa+ now generates AI-powered podcasts featuring two robotic hosts, built from user-chosen topics and real-time reporting from major outlets (AP, Reuters, Washington Post, Time, Forbes, Politico, USA Today and 200+ local papers). The service outlines the episode, lets users adjust length and focus, and notifies you on Echo Show or the Alexa app when it’s ready. Alexa+ is free for Prime members in the U.S.; non-Prime customers pay $19.99/month. This marks a major push into AI-created audio content, following earlier experiments like Google’s NotebookLM.
XAI announces grok-voice-think-fast-1.0, a flagship low-latency voice model designed for complex, multi-step workflows in customer support, sales, and enterprise apps. It collects and confirms structured data, orchestrates 28 tools across 25+ languages, and reasons in real time with no added latency for high-stakes interactions. Benchmarked at the top of the τ-voice leaderboard and deployed with Starlink for phone support and sales, it delivers strong autonomous resolution (about 70%) and conversion (about 20%) with minimal human intervention.
Google's Gemini for Google Home launches in early access with Continued Conversation, letting you ask follow-ups without repeating 'Hey Google' and enabling contextual actions (like adding recipe ingredients to a grocery list). It also expands multilingual support and improves side-talk detection to better distinguish follow-ups from other conversations; early access is limited to those who signed up.
Amazon is rolling out Alexa+ in the UK, upgrading Alexa to be more conversational and proactive by following threads. The upgrade will be free for Prime members or £19.99/month; new Echo devices get it immediately, older devices must sign up online. The change aims to revive a stagnating Echo and compete with Google Gemini for Home. It could also give Amazon more user data for targeted ads, with UK usage already showing about 114 billion interactions since 2023 (roughly 1,500 interactions per person).
Google is rolling out updates to the Google Home app that add new automation starters and conditions, expand Nest x Yale Lock features to general availability (history, notifications, battery status, passcodes, and guest access), and upgrade Gemini for Home with improved device targeting, better device categorization, more reliable notes/reminders/calendars/timers/alarms responses, enhanced conversation flow, and a premium Live Search for camera streams.
Samsung unveiled a beta of Bixby in One UI 8.5 that functions as a conversational device agent, enabling natural-language control of Galaxy devices and embedded live web search within Bixby’s interface, with examples like keeping the screen on and directly adjusting settings; availability is in select markets (Germany, India, Korea, Poland, the UK, and the US) with broader expansion planned, and language/support details plus privacy considerations apply.