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Ring
A little more than a month ago, the idea that a smart security camera powered by AI could describe what it saw was truly revolutionary. It’s now a standard feature of home security.
As it has in general technology, generative AI is now permeating the smart home and security markets. From smart cams which can add captions to their video history to smart lights that create lighting scenes using natural language prompts.
AI will be a dominant theme at the CES this year, with many smart home and home security products featuring LLM-powered features.
Another feature will be ubiquitous in the smart home: Matter, a budding standard for smart homes that aims at uniting the big smart ecosystems. We won’t be announcing any Matter security cameras at CES in January; we’ll explain the reason shortly.
Gen AI, meet the smart home
CES is becoming a big deal for smart homes and home security, but at CES in 2025, gen-AI will be sharing, if not hogging, the spotlight.
To give you an idea of what smart home-plus AI announcements we may see at CES in the future, look at what has already been announced by brands like Amazon’s Ring or Google’s Nest.
Ring launched Smart Video Search earlier this year. This feature uses AI-powered “Visual Language Modeling,” to match captured video with natural language search queries. In the real-world, this means that you can find a video clip by searching for, say, “racoons in the backyard last evening.”
Google does something similar with Nest cameras. They can now (provided that you’re enrolled in the Google Home Preview program) generate searchable texts descriptions for saved video clips, such as, “the dog’s digging in the yard” or “package of ballons.” You’ll also get a more detailed description courtesy Google’s Gemini AI.
This reminds us of the Psync Security Genie S, a AI-powered camera that was unveiled in November last year and could write-or at least try to write-detailed descriptions about what it saw.
This was a novelty feature just 13 months ago. We called it “more amusing than really useful.” Today, AI-powered cameras that can describe what they see aren’t as unique. I wouldn’t be surprised if more of them were on display at CES.
Generative AI is expected to continue its growth in other smart home categories at CES. Think of smart home systems which can generate their automations using natural-language commands (again, Google is already on this path) or smart lights which can create lighting scenes based on a short string (“a golden California sun in the summer”).
Launched in 2012 with the promise to simplify the thickets of competing smart home standard, Matter was initially anything other than simple. Matter was launched in a rough state, with only a small number of devices supported and a clunky onboarding process. It was positioned as the glue to allow smart devices work seamlessly with Alexa and other smart home platforms like Apple Home, Google Home and Samsung SmartThings.
Two years later, Matter has become proficient in many more device types, and its most recent update added a new multi-admin process that will–eventually–make it easier to add Matter devices to multiple smart home platforms at once.
It’s up to device manufacturers whether they implement Matter’s latest features into their products. So, the days of Matter Nirvana remain in the future.
Remember what I said earlier about Matter and the security cameras? Security cams are not included in the Matter specification yet (although that could change this year). So, while we might see plenty of AI powered cameras at CES 2020, we won’t see Matter-enabled cameras.
The Matter logo will still be a common sight on the Las Vegas show floor, and security cameras will likely no longer be the exception by CES 2026.
Ben Patterson, Senior Editor, TechHive.
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Ben is a technology and consumer electronics writer who has been in the business for over 20 years. Ben Patterson, a PCWorld contributor since 2014. He joined TechHive in 2019. Ben has covered everything from smart lights and soundbars to security cameras and smart speakers. Ben’s articles also appeared in PC Magazine and other publications such as TIME, Wired CNET, Men’s Fitness Mobile Magazine, Men’s Fitness Magazine, etc. Ben has a master’s in English literature.