Editorial illustration for Siri Struggles to Keep Pace as AI Transforms Smart Home Landscape in 2025
AI Assistants Falter: Smart Home Revolution Stalls in 2025
Apple's Siri remains a decade old as AI troubles smart homes in 2025
The smart home dream is hitting a snag. While artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize how we interact with our living spaces, the reality in 2025 looks messier than tech enthusiasts predicted.
Voice assistants were supposed to be our home's intelligent brain, smoothly controlling everything from thermostats to security systems. But something's gone wrong. The modern AI models that work brilliantly in chatbots and research labs seem to falter when it comes to practical, everyday home automation.
Apple's Siri sits at the center of this technological frustration. Once a pioneering voice assistant, it now appears frozen in time - a relic from an earlier era of smart technology. Consumers are discovering that newer, more advanced AI systems aren't necessarily more reliable when it comes to the nitty-gritty of home control.
The problem isn't just about Siri's limitations. It's about the broader challenge of translating sophisticated AI capabilities into practical, consistent home interactions.
As for Apple's Siri, it's still firmly stuck in the last decade of voice assistants, and it appears it will stay there for a while longer. The problem is that the new assistants aren't as consistent at controlling smart home devices as the old ones. While they were often frustrating to use, the old Alexa and Google Assistant (and the current Siri) would generally always turn on the lights when you asked them to, provided you used precise nomenclature.
Today, their "upgraded" counterparts struggle with consistency in basic functions like turning on the lights, setting timers, reporting on the weather, playing music, and running the routines and automations on which many of us have built our smart homes. I've noticed this in my testing, and online forums are full of users who have encountered it. Amazon and Google have acknowledged the struggles they've had in making their revamped generative AI-powered assistants reliably perform basic tasks.
And it's not limited to smart home assistants; ChatGPT can't consistently tell time or count. Why is this, and will it ever get better? To understand the problem, I spoke with two professors in the field of human-centric artificial intelligence with experience with agentic AI and smart home systems.
My takeaway from those conversations is that, while it's possible to make these new voice assistants do almost exactly what the old ones did, it will take a lot of work, and that's possibly work most companies just aren't interested in doing. Basically, we're all beta testers for the AI. Considering there are limited resources in this field and ample opportunity to do something much more exciting (and more profitable) than reliably turn on the lights, that's the way they're moving, according to experts I spoke with.
Smart home tech hit a surprising snag in 2025. While AI advances rapidly, voice assistants paradoxically became less reliable at basic tasks.
Siri remains particularly stagnant, seemingly trapped in an outdated interaction model. The assistant continues to lag behind emerging technologies, unable to adapt to more complex smart home environments.
The current generation of AI assistants introduces an unexpected regression. They struggle with consistent device control, a fundamental capability that earlier voice assistants handled with more predictability.
Precision matters more than ever. Users now require exact language and specific commands, challenging the promise of more simple technology.
Apple's approach appears particularly conservative. Siri's development seems to have slowed, leaving the platform potentially vulnerable as competitors explore more dynamic AI interactions.
The smart home landscape isn't becoming simpler. Instead, it's revealing how challenging smooth device integration remains, even with advanced artificial intelligence.
Reliability trumps idea. For now, users might prefer consistent but limited functionality over unpredictable "smart" systems that don't consistently perform basic tasks.
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Common Questions Answered
Why are modern AI voice assistants struggling with smart home device control in 2025?
The new generation of AI assistants have unexpectedly become less reliable at executing basic smart home commands compared to older versions. While they demonstrate advanced capabilities in other domains, these assistants paradoxically fail to consistently perform simple tasks like turning on lights or managing home devices.
How is Siri specifically impacted by the current smart home AI transformation?
Siri remains largely unchanged and stuck in an outdated interaction model, failing to adapt to more complex smart home environments. Apple's voice assistant continues to lag behind emerging AI technologies, unable to match the evolving expectations of intelligent home device management.
What unexpected regression has occurred with AI voice assistants in smart home technology?
Contrary to expectations, the latest AI voice assistants have introduced a fundamental reliability problem in device control, becoming less consistent than their predecessors. Despite significant advances in AI capabilities, these new assistants struggle to perform basic home automation tasks with the precision of older voice assistant models.