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/
282 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

115 comments sorted by

View all comments

71

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

93

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).

23

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

12

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.

3

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.

1

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

2

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...

5

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.

3

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.

0

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.

1

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.

-6

u/Risley 18d ago

Saying it’s over hyped is absurd. It’s extremely useful compared to old school google searches. 

4

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.

6

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.

0

u/Risley 17d ago

What does Nvidia stock value have to do with whether AI is a significant tech leap? 

2

u/Komnos 18d ago

My old school Google searches didn't tell me to eat a rock every day or glue cheese to my pizza crusts.

5

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.

15

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.

1

u/1aranzant 16d ago

Cause we need proper RBAC first… we’re doing all of this backwards