Natural-language functions for home alarms and automation—where do we stand in 2026?

Voice-controlled home alarm systems are nothing new per se, so the paradigm shift under way in the smart home space is a little less obvious. It is a true paradigm shift nonetheless—as systems no longer just follow commands, but understand what’s going on in the home and what users want from them.
 
Natural-language integration, especially for searching security footage, has become a staple in security. The technology is especially impactful in professional environments, where it enables users to retrieve scenes by saying, for example, “show me when a man wearing a red jacket entered the premises.” The latest AI, including large-scale models, is empowering this innovation, hailed by some as a revolution to security workflows.
 
To integrators of home security and automation systems, the “revolution” is under way, too. The latest AI can broaden their service model, shifting it from passive monitoring to real-time residential intelligence.
 

The context: From the beginning to Alexa and Siri

Voice (or rather audio)-controlled home automation started as early as the 1980s, with “The Clapper.” For younger readers unfamiliar with the infamous infomercials, it was a device that switched the lights on or off when you clapped a simple one-two rhythm. On the technical side, it was triggered by sharp peaks in sound—claps, but potentially also barking dogs, thunderstorms or anything else really. The next step were alarm systems that allowed for phone-based prompts. You could, for example, call your home system from work and tell it to arm in case you had forgotten to do so earlier.
 
The first great catalyst of innovation, however, was the advent of virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri or Google Home in the 2010s. Thanks to their voice-based interfaces, it was now possible to arm systems by simply saying "arm," and check the alarm status by asking "is the house secure?" Some vendors and their platforms, such as Ring Alarm or Abode iota, even enabled users to disarm their systems via a voice-delivered PIN.
 
These are still core features of voice-controlled home alarm systems. The offering of major players, however, has moved decisively into the IoT and smart home space, with systems that are truly conversational instead of merely voice-controlled.
 

What can you say to your system?

• Command level: “Arm the system,” or “Turn down the shades when it gets dark.”
• Simple query: “Are all doors locked?”
• Complex query: “Did the dog sitter walk Luna for a full hour?”
• Simple query: “Show me footage of when the delivery driver came.”
• Goal-oriented instructions: “I’m on a business trip until Friday. Only alert me in urgent cases.”

 

Key players and solutions

Ring:
Owned by Amazon, Ring and its home security systems are deeply integrated with Alexa. As such, Ring can take on all security-relevant tasks in an Alexa-integrated home. Highly customizable, it can for example ask visitors for their identity and intent at the door and relay the information to the homeowner via an app, anywhere in the world.
 
Thanks to the deep penetration of Amazon products in many markets, integration doesn’t end at your own front door. Thanks to its “Search Party” feature, users can access information from AI metadata gathered by cameras in their neighborhood, for example when searching for a lost pet.
 
Abode:
As another early adopter, Abode and its platforms iota Hub and Smart Security Hub support the three most common virtual assistants—Apple’s Siri-based HomeKit, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home. However, Abode also offers a proprietary voice-controlled automation engine, named CUE, which enables users to set complex rules, involving multiple triggers, actions and conditions, such as, “When motion is detected in the backyard, turn on the floodlights, but only if it’s after midnight on a weekday and nobody’s home.”   
 
Running on Abode edge devices, CUE can use the homeowner’s phone location via geofencing and local sensor data to arm itself automatically. Its conversation interface acts as a reporting tool, telling the owner upon their return, for example, “The house was secured while you were away from 9pm to 11pm. There were no incidents.”
 
Supporting Z-Wave and Zigbee protocols, CUE can be integrated with non-security smart home infrastructures, such as HVAC sensors and devices.
 
Aqara:
Xiaomi-owned Aqara has positioned itself as the “all-in on edge-AI” brand in the smart home market. Most important in this regard are its IoT gateways, such as M3Hub featuring 8GB encrypted eMMC storage. Cloud services are optional; they offer users greater remote control features, but are not essential to the functionality of the system.
 
Aqara puts great focus on biometrics, such as AI facial recognition, for example to identify whether the person at the door is a friend, a delivery driver, or an unknown person, which would trigger “pre-alarm” status. To communicate with the system, Aqara’s AI engine has a conversational interface and additional gesture controls. Users can, for example, switch off the light in their children’s room through a pre-defined gesture, ensuring they don’t wake them up.
 
Vivint:
With its Smart Hub, Vivint has positioned itself as a “security first” company, while also offering a wide variety of IoT integration options. Conversational features include speaking to persons at the perimeter of the property, including warning and deterring loiterers, and assisting the homeowner in emergency scenarios, for example accidents such as a fall of an older family member.
 
Smart Hub is fully integrated with Alexa and Google Assistant, but can also be “talked to” via Siri, connected through the Z-Wave Plus protocol. The system also acts as a native Z-Wave controller to connect third-party IoT devices such as thermostats and lighting systems, with the Hub acting as the orchestrating layer between different classes of smart home devices and interfaces.
 
Ello:
While also offering convincing security features, Ello solutions are on the “IoT-first” side of the spectrum. Ello has adopted a “zero-interface UX” philosophy, which is the company’s main differentiator: Users interact with their home security system through Whatsapp or Telegram. To them, Ello acts primarily as a chatbot with agentic features—it responds to queries such as, “Is grandma doing well today?” but also trigger an alarm or lock the doors if it detects an intruder.
 
Ello focuses strongly on elderly care. Its systems can act as a conversational AI agent and, for example, be programmed to follow a logical escalation path if something’s wrong with the person being cared for. In such a scenario, it can text the primary caregiver, then the neighbor, then a professional monitoring service if no one responds.
 
Alarm.com:
Alarm.com’s home security systems come with Gopher Info, a proprietary, AI-powered assistant featuring a conversational interface. Alarm.com hardware is increasingly equipped with edge AI, enabling various voice deterrence features. It can, for example, issue verbal warnings to potential intruders at the perimeter such as, “You are being recorded; don’t come closer.”
 
As one of the earliest adopters of a conversational interface, Alarm.com systems come with vast options in this regard. Initially, the system relied on Google Assistant and its Conversational Actions feature, but Alarm.com developed its proprietary interface after Google sunset its own interface in 2023.  
 

‘Dangerous dependence’ vs. ‘convenient integration’

Alarm.com’s forced switch from Google integration to a proprietary solution is a cautionary tale for the home automation industry. When Google “deprecated” its service relatively abruptly, it showed that integration with the offerings of tech giants can create one-sided dependence—even for industry leaders such as Alarm.com.
 
When Google sunset its service, Alarm.com users lost some features of their systems virtually overnight.
 
Having learned from this, Alarm.com and its peers have increasingly moved away from “deep integration,” toward interoperability. Their latest systems have fully fleshed out conversational interfaces themselves. If the homeowner is used to another virtual assistant, however, they will take a step back and let Alexa/Google/Siri do the talking.
 
In home automation more than in other fields, avoiding hardware and app clutter that is not just a sore to the eye and complicates maintenance is key. Instead of having one hub for security, one for lighting, one for climate controls, etc., the virtual assistant (Alexa/Google/Siri) acts as the single “pane of glass,” while the systems link up on deeper level and maintain functional sovereignty.
 
An essential role plays the Matter 1.4 standard, developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA). It solves the issue of "ecosystem lock-in" by introducing Enhanced Multi-Admin, which allows a single user consent to share devices across multiple platforms (like Apple and Amazon) simultaneously.
 

Where are conversational interfaces going from here?

One of the biggest benefits of conversational interfaces is mitigating “alert fatigue.” By understanding intent behind a command and the context of events, the systems move from being a “noisy alarm” to a silent guardian that only speaks when it matters. Conversational AI can filter hundreds of motion events into a single sentence, for example, “The gardener arrived at 10am, mowed the lawn and left at 11am.” It is expected that systems become even more refined in this regard.
 
Another important development is the “privacy first” trend. Systems increasingly rely on local LLMs and AI running on edge devices instead of in the cloud. This helps solve any latency issues, but also addresses the No. 1 barrier to smart home adoption: People’s fear of being “listened to” by Big Tech.
 
The best conversational home security systems act as a proactive “teammate” instead of being a reactive system. As ChatGPT-like chatbots become true AI agents, they no longer just tell you when the door is unlocked. Instead they:
 

• Notice the door is unlocked while you’re in the front yard and monitor whether you’re moving away from your home, potentially arming automatically.
• Check your calendar whether the dogwalker is expected.
• Care for the health and safety of loved ones.

 
As Ivan Mun, founder of Ello, told asmag in a previous interview: “What if we stopped making cameras smarter, and instead made them understand? ELLO isn’t just a better surveillance tool—it’s a rethinking of the relationship between people, their spaces, and the machines meant to protect them.”