Would you let ChatGPT control your smart home?

The company, which recently announced a partnership with Amazon, is now betting big on the new generation of large language models (LLMs) used by ChatGPT and other chatbots. Capecelatro believes that these systems will transform today’s voice assistants into something much more useful. “A year from now, no one’s going to be willing to tolerate the old way that Alexa, Google, Siri, and even Josh, operated. It’s just not going to be enough,” says Capecelatro. “If we don’t adopt ChatGPT-type technology, businesses like mine won’t exist in a year. It is critical to the future of anyone doing voice control in the home.” 

Today, you can ask Alexa to turn on the lights or have Siri tell you the temperature in your bedroom, and sometimes they’ll get it right. Or you may hear, “You have 15 devices named lights; which one would you like to control?” or “The current temperature in Kathmandu is 53 degrees.” But what if your voice assistant was not only always accurate but could also respond to nebulous comments like “I’ve had a rough day; what’s a good way to unwind?” with “intelligent” responses? For example, by lowering the shades, dimming the lights, adjusting the thermostat, and queuing up some goodies on Netflix? 

That’s the potential of voice assistants powered by new AI language models, according to Alex Capecelatro, co-founder of the Josh.ai home automation system. Josh.ai has already started working on a prototype integration using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This proof-of-concept video shows Capecelatro asking the Josh assistant to open the shades, turn off the music, and tell him the weather (controlling three things at once is a capability Josh already has). He then goes on to use more natural voice commands for the smart home, like “I’m filming a video; it’s kind of dark in here,” to which the voice assistant responds — slightly clumsily — by turning up the lights in the room.