AI voice control at what cost
Welcome to the March edition of the Open Home Foundation newsletter, the place to learn about the latest and greatest things for your smart home that improve its privacy, choice, and sustainability.
The Open Home newsletter is written by Paulus Schoutsen - President of the Open Home Foundation, and founder of Home Assistant. Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here!
A couple of news stories this month made me really think deeply about big tech’s push to combine voice and AI, and how this can put your privacy at serious risk. We also talk about a first-of-its-kind achievement for an open-source project, a great new partner, and a reminder to save the date for our upcoming State of the Open Home 2025!
AI voice control at what cost
At the end of February, Amazon announced its long-awaited Alexa+. Unlike Apple’s Intelligence-powered Siri, it’s set to ship very soon. Amazon Alexa is over 10 years old and a big part of what made voice assistants mainstream. It was supposed to be the next computing platform worth a billion dollars. Big tech started the voice race, only to fizzle out years later when it didn’t pan out.
For Alexa, they really hoped it would be a vehicle for you to shop more, but they hit a somewhat unsolvable problem. When you search for something on Google, you expect to see a list of results, but when you talk to an assistant, you expect a single answer. When it comes to shopping you can see how this falls apart, especially when there’s a marketplace full of knockoffs provided by alphabet-soup companies. Searching for anything yields thousands of irrelevant results with very long SEO slop titles, leading people to try it once and give up.
Adding a screen to these assistants was another dead end for shopping, as they weren’t as well optimized as the other screens in your life. If you're going to use a screen to buy something, why not just pull out your phone?
When the tide turned from gaining market share to how to monetize Alexa, the single input-output of a voice assistant started to be in the way. It needed to sell something, why not ads? Well, because users find them incredibly disruptive (for instance, the dreaded “by the way” upsell).
Talking to yourself
And this brings us to the announcement of Alexa+. Initially “announced” two years ago, it took new leadership in the form of Panos Panay to get it over the finish line. Panos came from Microsoft, where he was responsible for the Surface lineup of computers. At the launch, he sat down for an interview with Nilay Patel from the Decoder podcast and shared some great insight. He mentions how friends doubted him for joining the Surface division 12 years ago as the “laptop is dead” with the rise of the phone,
So what had happened was jobs moved to the phone that were really important, shopping, social media, your photos, [...]. But what happened was the things that didn’t move to the phone only got stronger on the PC over that time, and so they essentially became complements to one another. If you’re going to sit down and write a long story, you’re going to do it with a keyboard. You want to be snackable information, you’re going to pick up your phone. And then one got better at one of them and the other got better at the other, and incredibly so. It actually strengthened them both. I see this as very similar. I think as Alexa Plus comes into market, I think it’s going to be better at a lot of things and it’s going to move jobs to it.
Panos believes Alexa+ can convince us to move more tasks into the voice category. Once these tasks are performed via Alexa, Amazon will take a percentage if a task involves payments, much like how Google, Apple, and even the much less significant Meta VR operate their app stores.
Does Alexa stand a chance, or will setting a timer just result in getting some long-winded AI answers? To better understand this, let’s take a look at some tasks and how they fit into the Panos framework.
|
Computer |
Phone |
Voice Assistant |
|
Write this newsletter |
Read this newsletter |
Set a timer |
|
Excel stuff |
Social media |
Smart home control |
|
Programming |
Chat with friends |
Play music |
|
Music production |
Order a ride |
Add items to a shopping list |
|
Order groceries |
Make a restaurant reservation |
Ask a random question |
Amazon believes Alexa+ will shift tasks like ordering groceries, booking rides, and making restaurant reservations into the voice assistant category. But I must say even after seeing all their staged demos, I’m skeptical. Each of these experiences still needs some phone equivalent for people to use on the go - you’re not going to be ordering groceries via voice in the office. When you do end up adding things to your grocery shop by voice, you ask for something like olive oil, and now it has to find a way to choose between ten slightly different options… I feel we're just back to square one.
Amazon needs a way for Alexa to pay for itself today, as it’s costing them a lot of money, and adding in AI will only make it cost more. They are saying there’s a monthly fee, but it comes included with Prime, so that’s a couple hundred million “free” users. How is this going to work?
Alexa Minus
Betting big on Alexa+ comes with a major caveat for existing users. Alexa used to offer an opt-in feature to process commands locally. Enabling the feature meant no audio recordings were uploaded to Amazon, and users didn’t have to worry who was listening. Alexa+ cannot run locally, so Amazon has decided to remove this feature with an automatic update.
Maybe all you used it for was setting timers. You enabled the privacy setting and used it in your home for years. Now to continue using it, you must forgo your privacy. Is this legal? Cory Doctorow explains that for the US, yes, it is (and details the shocking lack of privacy legislation passed in the internet era).
Amazon's vision for Alexa+ is not just to be a voice assistant with advanced capabilities but also a voice companion—one that can help you navigate life, keep an eye on your calendar, order things, and summarize updates from friends and family. But to do this, you need to be all-in on Amazon. Use their products and give them full access to all your data. Panos has explicitly said, “The service is better with Prime.”
So, the path to monetization is to convince users to give all their data to a company, whose code and operations we cannot audit, and operates under very little privacy legislation to limit any overreach. The amazing Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, recently called this phenomenon the taking down of the blood-brain barrier. She explains that to hand off even the most basic tasks, you need to give an AI the keys to your life, including access to your phone, wallet, computer, and all the data within them - a total privacy nightmare.
My main takeaway from the Alexa+ launch is that the Open Home Foundation is more important than ever. We can’t let our future be dominated by AI voice assistants driven by Amazon, Apple, and Google. The solution to this is choice—many voice assistant options—including a privacy-focused alternative that puts users, not profit, first.
We've been building exactly that for the past 11 years with our community. A smart home that gives you privacy and choice, which can be controlled by a voice assistant that can skip the cloud altogether. One that can set a timer without the need to send all your data to a centralized server to be recorded for eternity. Where you have control over what data you give it and where that data is processed. You can still use AI to control your home, but now on your terms.
State of the Open Home 2025
On April 12th, we’re going live with this year’s State of the Open Home - our annual recap of the previous year and look ahead to the next. Just like past years, this live stream will be packed with awesome announcements, updates, and cool community highlights. 🔔 Be sure to click to get notified when it starts (Saturday, April 12 - 18:00 GMT / 20:00 CEST / 14:00 EDT / 11:00 PDT), and we can’t wait to see you in the comments!
Paulus Schoutsen
Home Assistant officially Matters
Matter in Home Assistant has been officially certified! 🎉 The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) has certified Home Assistant and the Open Home Foundation Matter Server, the first open-source project to receive this certification. Certification is proof that open source projects can sit among, or even above, big tech when it comes to providing the best smart home experience.
Marcel van der Veldt
Motionblinds joins the Works With Home Assistant Program
Motionblinds is the newest partner joining the Works with Home Assistant program. They are the first partner to certify smart window blinds, marking another step towards a future where users can assemble a smart home exclusively with devices certified to work with the Open Home. A really cool aspect is their conversion kits and new Matter bridge that brings their older blinds onto Home Assistant. They’ve thought of everything to keep their blinds working locally into the future, a win for sustainability.
Miranda Bishop
Home Assistant 2025.3: View those headers!
Home Assistant 2025.3 is now available and the headline new feature is the new customizable view headers (with template and markdown support!). There have also been upgrades to the Tile card with clearer action cues, a new inline layout, along with buttons for switches and counter controls. Beyond visuals, Assist chat now streams responses for faster interaction, and new integrations include Azure Storage and WebDAV for backups. Also, the SmartThings integration has been completely rewritten for easier setup and more secure push updates. There have been further refinements to graph legends and maps that now cluster people and things. There are plenty more improvements, so read the notes for every new feature.
Franck Nijhof
Music Assistant's next big hit
Since we last mentioned Music Assistant, several big releases have added a lot of new functionality, and version 2.4 is pretty significant. Top features include new optimizations for streaming to Assist devices, Spotify Connect support, Apple Music, EQ controls, major stability improvements, and the addition of podcasts and audiobooks. The blog has even more features, and I highly recommend giving it a read.
Marcel van der Veldt
Community highlights
Jay at Hound Hill Homestead doesn't spare any effort in making sure their birds are all tucked in at night. Using a mix of AI vision and smart coop doors, they know precisely how many birds are inside.
Nick Hayward has outfitted his narrowboat, Thin Lizzy, with Home Assistant. They're using it to monitor for leaks, keep air quality in check, battery monitoring, and use a Music Assistant powered streaming system.
This might be one of the best I’ve seen yet. u/Individual_Cod_4726 embedded a magic mirror in their bathroom and has powered it with Home Assistant 🛁.
Every time I think everything has been automated, someone comes up with a new use case. Like u/Zealousideal-Sort988 has accomplished with their Home Assistant controlled observatory.
This is a 3D-printed enclosure covered in speaker fabric made by u/lordjustice17. They added in a bigger speaker, and just soldered wires directly into the Voice PE (no extra audio circuitry).
In other news
- Fast Company ranks the Open Home Foundation among the top 10 most innovative consumer electronics companies of 2025. It's great to see people noticing our hard work. (Staff, Fast Company)
- Delete your DNA from 23andMe right now. Who wants to take bets it's an insurance company who buys all this data, and uses this to increase premiums. (Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post)
- This Google change is breaking some digital photo frames. At least you can still use local files, but just another reminder that cloud connections never last. (Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Verge)
- Sonos has canceled its streaming video player. Sonos owners shouldn’t relax yet—they’re still partnered with that targeted ad company. (Chris Welch, Verge)
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