Meet the AI that wants to control your smart home
Vivint's new virtual assistant, Sky, promises to manage your connected gadgets for you.
Professional home security company Vivint today introduced AI software called Sky to its smart-home and security platform. While users previously had manual control over their various connected Vivint devices through the Vivint Smart Home app, Sky is supposed to make things even easier.
According to the Vivint team, a typical home with a Vivint system has at least 10 sensors. Sky is supposed to use information from those sensors, as well as from your phone and system usage data to give you curated recommendations based on your routine.
Here are a couple of things Vivint claims Sky can do:
- Forget to lock your front door? No problem. Sky is supposed to know when everyone's left the house and can either ask if you want to lock the door, close the garage door, etc., or do it for you.
- Leave the heat on? Don't sweat it. Sky should auto-adjust your thermostat based on whether you're home or away.
Like the Nest Learning Thermostat, Sky's algorithms are supposed to improve over time as they study your patterns. That's when the AI is supposed to start automatically making changes on your behalf. Sky also integrates with Amazon's voice control assistant, Alexa.
Sky is one of the first whole-home AIs we've encountered in the smart-home market. And we're definitely curious how well Sky intuits needs. It isn't a total disaster if your Nest thermostat fails to reduce the heat when you leave home, but it might be a big problem if Sky forgets to lock the front door and arm the security system for you.
Click here to find out what else is happening at CES 2017.
