r/homeassistant • u/frenck_nl Home Assistant Lead @ OHF • 18d ago
Release 2025.8: The summer of AI ☀️
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/08/06/release-20258/125
u/therealswil 18d ago
I appreciate that a lot of people want AI stuff, and for those of us who don't, it doesn't have to be there. Unlike every other tech product in 2025 that rams it down your gullet.
(Though I'd love to see some more non-AI things in releases like ahem RBAC)
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u/Zweetkonijn 17d ago
Just curious, I had to look up what RBAC stands for. Why would you want Role-Based Access Control?
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u/therealswil 17d ago
Ever wanted to give some access to your Home Assistant to kids or guests or extended family without giving them access to everything?
RBAC would do that (securely, instead of relying on hacks and hoping they don't dig around too much)
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u/JamesTiberiusCrunk 10d ago
Yeah this is exactly what I want. I need a good way to limit access for kid accounts. Kids are curious, they have lots of free time, they have grown up with a lot of tech, and they're not afraid of breaking things.
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u/1aranzant 16d ago
You currently can’t give someone a guest account without them being able to control everything… the different accounts/users feature is a gimmick at the moment.
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u/F1rstxLas7 18d ago
Pi-hole users can now leverage API v6 functionality
FINALLY
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u/dovercliff 18d ago
HACS has an alternative, which goes above and beyond the official one, and the author has indicated they will continue to maintain it.
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u/F1rstxLas7 18d ago
Yeap, been using it, but HACS repos are HACS repos. Set up with the best intentions, but people get busy with other things. And there being an official working integration now means there will be less motivation for the HACS integration to continue development. Especially because Pi Hole doesn't generally change thst much from release to release. v6 was kind of a misnomer.
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u/talormanda 18d ago
I manually added my scripts to enable / disable pi-hole with their API so this won't happen again.
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u/zSprawl 17d ago
Ironically I find it the opposite.
For my solar panels, the native Enphase was behind on the v8 firmware and I ended up moving to a hacs version to get it online. I'm still using it years later because moving back risks losing data if done wrong.
Likewise, for Pihole, I moved to the hacs one because the native one wasn't updated for 6 months. The HACS one was done within days... and for now at least the developer is active.
Same with my Rainforest power device, which the native one works now, but I just don't wish to go through the trouble of going back after leaving for a hacs version.
I guess I keep getting hit with the same issue. Some native integration stops working, and I stumble into a solution in the issues thread on github where the community fixes it much faster than the native developer.
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u/FalconSteve89 18d ago
This is neat, I just hope it makes HA better, Google Home has gotten worse
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u/Dr4kin 18d ago
The good thing is that Home Assistant adds these as additional options. You can use them, but you can do it manual way if you want.
Using AI to detect things in video feeds can be very useful. The current suggestions aren't that necessary. In an upcoming release there is probably going to be a way to generate automations, which could become quite useful. If that works good enough, it could be a great way for newer users to get their first more complex automations up and running.
I am quite pleased with how they integrated all of it so far. It's not like so many other products where you are forced to use it, and it's often enough even worse than it was before. Here you get options, and they use it to improve things that you couldn't do otherwise. The intent system for voice is great, but has its limits. Using a LLM can improve it immensely, and there wouldn't be another way of doing it.
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u/Paradox 18d ago
The image/video feed detection feature is immensely useful.
We've had a problem with people trying to sell things in our neighborhoods. No solicitation signs dont stop them. So having an AI describe, in text, who is coming to the door is very useful. Lets me know if I should take a closer look at the video alert, ignore it since its just a delivery person ringing the bell and running away, or a salesman
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18d ago edited 11d ago
[deleted]
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u/Paradox 18d ago
Right now I'm using Google's AI, as it has the most generous free tier. But you can use any of them that accept an image.
The doorbell is Unifi protect.
You just set up an automation that grabs a still from the doorbel and saves it to something like
/tmp/doorbell.jpg. You then just use one of the AI prompt actions (like the new one they added in 25.8) to upload the image to the AI, with a prompt of something like:This is an image from a doorbell camera, which has just been rung. Please describe any people in the picture, paying special attention to if they are delivery people, look like sales people, or are children, and note that in the output. Also note if any packages are visible within the image. Keep your response under 140 characters.
You can take the output and send that as a notification or whatever else
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u/FalconSteve89 18d ago
I also hope they don't focus too much on AI, my Nest is controllable over matter, mostly, but I can't tell it if I want the HVAC fan on?
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u/HTTP_404_NotFound 18d ago
I did notice- google's android auto assistant, has actually been getting noticeably worse over the last few years.
Idk what they did- but, used to work extremely well too.
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u/Butthurtz23 18d ago
Google had done a great job with enshittification with their own search engine, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did the same for Google Home just to cater to their shareholders and advertisers over end users.
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u/the_deserted_island 18d ago
Those of us that invested early into Google were bombarded by ads on nest speakers and lights that wouldn't turn on. At one point, Google botched an update to their early Wi-Fi devices so hard that you had to have physical access to the device to reset it, which was great for those of us that administered out of state systems for family. Google is past enschittification and hasn't been prioritizing the needs of end users forever now. Don't be fooled!
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u/zSprawl 17d ago
I really like HA's Voice Assistant PE using ChatGPT or Gemini as a backup to local intents.
The one tradeoff is the Echo and Google hardware (mics and speakers) are just better for cheaper. The HA PE is a step up over those ESP Atom things, but still, just a little background noise really throws the device off. Alexa ain't perfect, but normally you can yell loudly at her over everything to get what you want. HA doesn't work that way.
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u/WWGHIAFTC 18d ago
Awesome. I am 100% onboard and excited for AI HA with full control, locally hosted solutions. As long as it's optional (IT IS!) and not forced on anyone (IT'S NOT!) and always has fully local options (YES!)
thanks SO MUCH u/frenck_nl & Team & Contributors for the absolute ridiculous amount of work that goes into making HA so good. Truly.
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u/ZAlternates 18d ago
I really love using Gemini and ChatGPT with my voice assistant. I also love I can swap to fully local control with speech-to-phrase on a low powered device.
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u/Marathon2021 18d ago
I, for one, am super excited by the possibilities of feeding a still image from one of my cameras into the ai_task agent, asking it to come up with a structured data response, and then having that answer become sensor data in HA.
First use case is going to be "count the number of trash bins at the end of our driveway" and if it's trash night and bins = 0 I can have it nag us ...
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u/-eschguy- 18d ago
Some day I'll host an AI instance and this stuff will be relevant. Glad they're making it optional.
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u/HTTP_404_NotFound 18d ago edited 18d ago
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/08/06/release-20258/#energy-flow-on-your-energy-dashboard
Sweet, I no longer have to build my own!
https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2023/home-assistant---energy-flow-diagram/
/Edit-
Be cool if the untracked usage boiled down as my setup did. It makes the right column looks misleading, especially if you have multiple tiers configured.
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u/NomadicSun 18d ago
I don’t get the hate for AI. Being able to get rid of google/alexa devices and self host all that functionality is a huge upgrade for me. I love to see continuing improvements and functionality to that
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u/calinet6 18d ago edited 18d ago
I think hate toward LLM tech in general is understandable: it’s a problematic tech, vastly over-hyped, consumes way too many resources, is extremely misleading unless you genuinely understand the underlying tech, and the people who tend to idolize it are (to put it kindly) problematic.
However, all that said… if there’s one use case that LLMs are for, it’s to be the Star Trek Computer interface. That’s the one. That’s what they’re for. They’re language models and pattern matchers, this is what they’re good at.
And that’s what Home Assistant is getting close to here, and I think it’s very promising.
Anyway I don’t think we should be confused when people see problems with LLM technologies: they are problematic. The best directions will come from acknowledging the complex reality, not trying to use them for everything, and applying them to use cases they’re good for (like this one).
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u/Dr4kin 18d ago
I know that I am very skeptical if any software announces that they integrated AI. Currently, every company pushes it down your throat in most products you don't want it at all, others make the experience actively worse and a very small portion actually benefits from these features.
Home Assistant does it right. Its optional and it's implemented only where it can improve a workflow or make it possible.
I don't need to want some glowing animated AI button and most of the UI replaced by a chatbox and that's what most companies are currently doing
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u/trialbaloon 18d ago
To be honest. I always found the star trek computer interface to be a bad UI haha. It's more of a gimmick that translates well to acting/on screen performance and communicating what is happening to the audience. It's slower than typing/good datavis. Though I am also not a super socially driven person so speaking is just not an efficient way for my brain to receive or output information.
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u/calinet6 18d ago
Yeah, heh, not saying it’s perfect. But it was a good vision for how easy it might be to interact with a computer in a way that doesn’t require a mouse and keyboard, in a way that’s actually powerful enough to get things done.
I bet we could do even better if we wanted. But it’s a good start, and I’d like to realize it personally.
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u/ElectroSpore 18d ago
Well technically the holodeck is the ultimate example of VIBE coding, where you ask it a to do generalized things and it comes up with something fairly close that you then need to iterate on.
Complete with vibe coding bugs like Moriarty when it doesn't understand you or you accidently jailbreak the safety system with your request
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u/trialbaloon 18d ago
Cant say I'd thought of this but it's interesting. The holodeck should probably be removed from starfleet given all the issues it seems to cause across the federation fleet. Somehow Quark runs a tight ship with DS9's holosuite. Very few issues on DS9...
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u/ElectroSpore 18d ago
I would say 99% of the issues are just caused by the senior staff running commands as admin instead of as a regular user.
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u/gscjj 18d ago
I think it’s mostly a knowledge gap, AI is largely what you make of it. As in trash in, trash out. Train it do something well and it will do it.
Most of the popular generative AI basically scrapes the internet, and is a glorified overconfident search engine - if you use it like that.
But if say your scope is limited, the data is trusted, AI can be very powerful.
That’s why integrated AI solutions are going to have more intimate knowledge than one that’s scraping Reddit, StackOverflow and online docs. Combine that reasoning and context (like having access to HA), and it’s more helpful than problematic.
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u/shortwhiteguy 18d ago
I think there are many more use cases that LLMs are well suited for than the "Star trek Computer interface", many of which are quite useful for Home Assistant. Just a few examples:
- Converting unstructured/messy data into structured data. This allows you to programmatically parse data that would otherwise be a pain. E.g. "Return YAML with <schema> of all lights that are on separated by common colors (red, green, blue, yellow, etc.)" -> HA lists all alights and their RGB values -> LLM returns YAML separated by color -> Automation can make choices based on results
- Summarizing lots of text/data down to something quickly digestible. E.g. "Over the last month, what automations have had the most triggers" -> HA lists all of the triggers for all automations over the past month -> LLM returns a summary of results
- Contextually understanding an otherwise ambiguous request/prompt and turning that into a query.
All of those examples don't need to be triggered/interacted with in "chat" like scenario, they could all be used as part of an automation or script.
And from the looks of the latest updates from HA, they certainly are starting to open up those types of use cases for those who are interested in taking advantage.
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u/calinet6 18d ago
Yep. There are far more uses than just that. I’m just pretty excited about that one in particular, and I want it to work so well that we don’t even have to think about it.
There is merit in focusing until something is done right, and not getting distracted by 100 possibilities.
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u/Risley 18d ago
Saying it’s over hyped is absurd. It’s extremely useful compared to old school google searches.
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u/Dycedarg1219 18d ago
It's being sold as the answer to everything, technology that will change the world, with AGI by the end of the year. Even if the LLMs were twice as good as they are they would be over hyped. Meanwhile lawyers keep submitting briefs with hallucinated cases in them and Google's AI summaries spout ridiculous nonsense with absolute confidence all the time.
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u/calinet6 18d ago
Ridiculous. It’s insanely overhyped. It’s being treated like the second coming of the Internet, not just an improvement on Google searches.
Of course it’s useful and an improvement on older tech, but does that mean Nvidia should be the most valuable company in the world? No.
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u/LoganJFisher 18d ago
I don't hate the AI stuff for Home Assistant, and intend to someday even utilize it. I do, however, wish they would priority some other longstanding issues, like a comprehensive guest mode.
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u/JQuilty 18d ago
People hate it because cocaine fueled MBA's buy bullshit from Sam Altman, Elmo, Satya Nadella, etc that they can magically eliminate most of their workers if they just buy their tech. This has lead to mass layoffs for no real reason other than hysteria, forcing employees to use software they were suckered into paying for even if it doesn't work well, companies forcing it into everything because other cocaine fueled MBA's and stock traders demand it in everything to show they're with the current thing, and we see stuff like path finding algorithms being rebranded as AI purely for marketing and hype.
Almost all this bullshit is being driven by LLM's, one very specific type of AI that has some very serious issues in execution, in theory, and the amount of resources needed to support it.
It's a bubble that needs to pop like how everything had to be quantum a few years ago. And big data before that. And then machine learning enabled before that. And mobile first before that. And cloud before that.
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u/Miserable-Soup91 17d ago
People are bringing sooo many preconceived biases into this update post that I'm honestly shocked. Mostly I'm surprised by the ignorance.
READ the release post people!
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u/OhMrAnger 18d ago
I'm most excited about being able to use weekdays in time triggers. It was weird that you had to do all kinds of workarounds to do that before.
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u/ReidenLightman 18d ago
If HA goes down the rabbit hole of shoe-horning in AI that gives wrong answers because it doesn't know something but must give a convincing response, I will riot.
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u/averitablerogue 18d ago
From the notes: “Though AI gets many people excited, there are still people who would prefer not to have this technology in their smart homes. We want to accommodate everyone’s choices, whether that’s to use AI or not. These features won’t appear unless you set up an AI integration and configure some specific settings.”
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u/ReidenLightman 18d ago
That's for now. Let's hope some AI diehard doesn't take over any time soon.
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u/Scringus_Dingus 18d ago
I'm totally fine giving these folks $5 a month, just started my HA journey and haven't even taken advantage of HA Cloud (can't figure out why remote access isn't working) but that's money better sent to them than say, Google, Wyze, etc.
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18d ago
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u/jah_bro_ney 18d ago
AI has so many practical uses and benefits for self-hosted applications - voice assistants for Home Assistant, person detection in Immich, object detection in Frigate, etc.
I'm sorry you have such a narrow view of this technology.
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u/PrairiePilot 18d ago
You haven’t been paying attention if you’re surprised Home Assistant is focusing on AI. Paulus himself is an advocate for AI in the home and I know at least a few of the devs work with AI plenty.
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u/Ok-Lunch-1560 16d ago
I use the LLM Vision integration, does this update add this functionality natively pretty much?
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u/LoganJFisher 14d ago
I'm looking at the possibility of getting a GTX 1080 later this year, which I'd like to use to run a local LLM to integrate into Home Assistant.
The two options I'm familiar with are OLlama and GPT4All. Are there any others? Do these both integrate equally well into Home Assistant?
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u/Prestigious_Table400 18d ago
Weird im not seeing the update in my HA and there doesn't appear to be a forums thread discussing it?
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u/badablahblah 18d ago
I use HA to optimise my energy usage, not to consume watts in some Google data center somewhere because I want it to tell me something funny it saw on my ring camera
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u/schmoopycat 18d ago
Well it’s a good thing it’s optional and you have full control over your instance
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u/95beer 18d ago
Summer of AI? Does that mean I should wait 6 months to install this update? Coz it looks pretty cool, don't know if I want to wait that long...
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u/sirmattiasthe712th 18d ago
I know, right. Pretty weird title to have given it’s the middle of winter. Maybe it’s advance notice?
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u/sirmattiasthe712th 18d ago
I retract my snark… the first sentence of the blog post acknowledges that it’s not everywhere. Refreshing awareness!
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18d ago
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u/frenck_nl Home Assistant Lead @ OHF 18d ago
Except it isn't forced... as a matter of fact, you'd have to make an effort to enable it. As the blog post also explains.
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u/LetMeSeeYourNumber 18d ago
Yea it’s useless.
But on the other hand, the less time they spend on core stuff, the less chance more important stuff breaks.
👌
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u/_Rand_ 18d ago
I’ve just no idea where to even start with AI, as a functional tool anyways.
Like, screwing around? sure.
But as something I use every day for like, controlling my lights and air conditioning? Not a clue which of the 7 billion models to use.
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u/trialbaloon 18d ago
Not sure why AI is needed for most home automation. I guess I can see the appeal of converting english phrases to automation yaml but in terms of turning off my lights... I just need an algorithm that can determine sunset and a function call.
I honestly dont know how LLMs fit into automation. If you make heavy use of voice assistants maybe? I never found those useful though.
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u/Dr4kin 18d ago
LLM or other "AI" shouldn't replace a proper configuration and algorithm, but should work with it.
Letting an LLM create an automation can be nice if it actually creates the YAML you want.
It's interesting if you have cameras. Detect if there is a package in front of my door. Who is ringing my doorbell, is the correct garbage bin outside for tomorrow
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u/trialbaloon 18d ago
I hate the catch all nature of the term AI these days. I agree with you 100%. I use AI for my camera system at home (all local running on a 10 year old NVIDIA card). However that's quite old categorization AI (traditional ML). Most of the new hotness is LLM based "agents" which is what I am assuming HomeAssistant is getting excited about.
I'm a huge AI fan but not GenAI or LLM based tech. I think that's overhyped AF while categorization AI is underhyped. I'll get off my soapbox for now though.
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u/kmccoy 18d ago
Why is any of this needed? Can't you just turn on and off the light switch on your own?
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u/trialbaloon 18d ago
Sure. But it saves a small amount of time. Arguably that's not needed in terms of life but this subreddit is about home automation so I guess I'll just assume that most here are interested in the topic. The question I am posing is what use LLMs have to the subject of this subreddit.
I guess my use of home automation is all quite practical. Lights are easy enough to automate and things like irrigation/home security. I'm not trying to recreate some Hollywood notion of what the future looks like, I'm doing things that save me time.
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u/kmccoy 18d ago
That's all totally fair, and honestly I'm way more of an AI skeptic than I am an AI embracer. But I've experimented with a few things that I think are interesting in terms of how it can improve the little things that Home Assistant does. One is to look at a camera feed and see if the trash can is by the house or out by the road. Another is to summarize weather alerts for announcements, and to summarize the weather forecast for the upcoming few days for a markdown card. I can see some use cases for improving the use of voice commands to set timers, which we currently do on Alexa (and is basically the only thing do with voice control in our home) and would like to move to HA when they feel like they're as functional in HA as in Alexa. All of the stuff we do is practical and aimed at saving a bit of time or hassle to do a thing. The great thing about how the HA devs are incorporating this stuff is that it allows people who are completely anti-AI to ignore it, the people who are completely all-in on a Star Trek voice command future can use all the tools, and the folks like you and me who are in the middle are provided with tools that enable us to make small improvements in our setup as we see fit.
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u/trialbaloon 18d ago
Yeah I wouldn't say I am a hater of what HomeAssistant is doing and think ultimately users absolutely can decide if they want to fully embrace AI into their home. I think that's your right. I do find the concept of using some local LLMs potentially interesting. I would never use a cloud based one but that holds true for virtually all of my home automation (no cloud).
I think I dont always agree with how HomeAssistant does development. I find their priorities to not really align with mine most of the time. However, they are, at least for now, very ethical. They give the user power and even provide an API letting you use HomeAssistant as a meta API ignoring all of their features if you want. I love that and wish more developers gave users that sort of power.
I think your examples are pretty appropriate uses of LLMs. I think people like me dont necessarily think LLMs are useless, just extremely tired of the hype. I also work as a software engineer so I've become a bit radicalized just based on how often I have to listen to some C suite dipshit talk about AI.
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u/yetAnotherLaura 18d ago
Though AI gets many people excited, there are still people who would prefer not to have this technology in their smart homes. We want to accommodate everyone’s choices, whether that’s to use AI or not. These features won’t appear unless you set up an AI integration and configure some specific settings.
Absolutely forced.
Uninstalled.
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u/WWGHIAFTC 18d ago
Sarcasm or not?
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u/yetAnotherLaura 18d ago
The guy was complaining AI was being forced on people while the change notes take extra care to address that point in the first paragraphs.
I thought the sarcasm was obvious but seeing the reaction here...
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u/WWGHIAFTC 18d ago
I assumed so as well, but the crazy replies from people that don't seem to want to listen or read are blurring the lines a bit. Live chat on the stream has some wackos too.
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u/GrimDozen 18d ago
Ugh, the year of voice and now this
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u/danny29812 17d ago
Yeah I'm glad it's being improving consistently, but the focus over the last year or two has been kinda missing me.
I understand many people are big on voice assistants and AI, but I pretty much only use voice for setting temporary timers and reminders (which are pretty hot garbage in home assistant). And I only use AI very selectively and want it no where near my home automations.
I like a lot of the b-list stuff like the new dashboards and the tagging system, but I wish that was the primary focus.
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u/18randomcharacters 18d ago
Am I the only one disgusted by AI being pushed into HA?
This is our platform of OFFLINE, LOCAL ONLY smart homes. I don’t want ChatGPT integration.
Edit: I’m glad it’s optional for now. But just its integration gives me the ick.
Though AI gets many people excited, there are still people who would prefer not to have this technology in their smart homes. We want to accommodate everyone’s choices, whether that’s to use AI or not. These features won’t appear unless you set up an AI integration and configure some specific settings
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u/beanmosheen 18d ago
I work for a megacorp that's a Microsoft AI partner and I fucking despise every bit of it. It's all AI-slop dog shit, and we are staring to have issues with the less than optimal folks causing issues with it .
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u/Miserable-Soup91 17d ago
People are having some weird reactions to this update. AI has been a thing in HA for a while now. This is just allowing better integration for things people were already doing before. No one is being forced to use it, but it is making things easier for people that do.
AI also doesn't have to mean you are integrating with chatgpt either. Ollama runs fully locally. It does require more powerful gear to run but that will inevitably change in the future. And when it does, HA will have the foundation to harness it to whichever extent each user decides.
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u/18randomcharacters 17d ago
I think calling it “the summer of ai” makes it sound like that’s the only thing HA is focusing on, which may or may not be true, but is not ideal.
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u/KTibow 18d ago
OpenRouter should not be its own integration. There should be a generic OpenAI compatible integration.
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u/Pivotonian 18d ago
"In most parts of the world, summer mode is in full effect!"?
I didn't know the whole southern hemisphere is in the minority of the world.
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u/Dycedarg1219 18d ago
Not the most technically correct phrasing, but "In most occupied parts of the world" sounds awkward and I think most people knew what they meant.
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u/OrganicNectarine 17d ago
So funny how they tried to be almost stupidly inclusive and yet here we are with someone still being offended by it...
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u/Shotokant 18d ago
Hey, stop being so Northern hemisphere centric, its bloody inter for half the planet.
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u/OmegaPoint6 18d ago
A tip for anyone using the UniFi Protect integration, 2025.8 starts using the new public API & requires the user account in UniFi protect be a Super Admin in order to create the API key. If your existing account for home assistant is not a super admin the integration will fail to initialise.