AI for the home: How AI is already helping us in our everyday lives

Here is an overview of the benefits of AI in everyday life:

• Convenience: Voice assistants respond to commands in natural language.
• Economy: Smart household appliances optimize energy consumption.
• Time savings: Mechanical household helpers with AI take over the cleaning.
• Entertainment: There are personalized recommendations on Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube.
• Picture quality: AI in TV improves movies through upscaling and color optimization.

In another article, we answer the question: What is AI?

Below, we present the specific use cases of AI in the household in more detail:

A Smart Home makes your everyday life more comfortable and saves you a lot of time.

Originally, smart home systems operated with fixed rules and schedules. Thanks to AI, they are now more flexible and interactive. They learn from your habits, recognize patterns, and make independent decisions that increase your living comfort.

For example, you no longer have to worry about turning off the lights at night or turning down the heating during the day – the smart devices do that for you.

Voice assistants and smart speakers

Intelligent voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant understand and respond to voice commands. They are available in most smartphones and smart speakers, integrated, convert speech into text, recognize your intentions, and perform tasks.

With intelligent voice control, you can keep your hands free while completing multiple tasks simultaneously. You can manage appointments, reminders, and to-do lists, have messages read aloud, or play music.

Many households in Germany use voice assistants to control their smart homes. These assistants can turn compatible lights, heating, or multimedia devices on and off using voice commands.

Energy control and optimization

AI increases comfort and helps save energy.

Lighting and heating work automatically with a few simple tricks. You can set smart lamps and thermostats with a timer. Or you can turn them on and off via Geofencing. It depends on whether you’re at home. This way, you save resources by only using electricity and gas when necessary.

Some washing machines and dishwashers already offer intelligent water-saving features. Built-in sensors detect load size and adjust the wash or rinse cycle accordingly. This often results in lower water consumption compared to a standard program.

Household appliances with computer vision

When devices can “see,” it’s called computer vision. This type of AI is already integrated into many household appliances.

• Smart refrigerators are equipped with cameras and sensors that detect and monitor the contents of the refrigerator. They identify food, monitor its shelf life, and can even automatically place new orders when supplies are running low. This way, the refrigerator always stays full – and you can reduce food waste at the same time. One example of a refrigerator with AI is the Samsung RF65DG9H0EB1EF Side by Side refrigerator, which automatically detects fresh food as it’s added or removed, helping you manage your personal grocery list.
• Smart stoves and ovens also use computer vision to monitor the cooking process. They detect when the food has reached the desired temperature and automatically adjust cooking and baking times. The result is delicious meals and potentially lower energy consumption.
• Smart surveillance cameras detect people, differentiate between them, and learn who is a resident and who is an intruder. You receive notifications when an unknown person is at the door or when your child comes home. The cameras also detect animals and warn you if your four-legged friend is behaving suspiciously. AI increases security and gives you less worry while you’re away.

You may think that a robot with AI for the home is still a thing of the future, but intelligent vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, and pool robots are already widespread today.

Many current models find their way through your living room, garden, or pool independently. The robots navigate independently and orient themselves using laser sensors, cameras, and other smart technologies. They also detect obstacles and cleverly navigate around them. Learn how artificial intelligence is making robot vacuum cleaners smarter in our article. Intelligent robot vacuum cleaners with AI: What these vacuum cleaners can do.

These mechanical household helpers with AI take a lot of work off your hands while optimizing their energy consumption. After a short time, a robot vacuum cleaner will have learned the layout of your house and can now navigate and clean it particularly efficiently.

You also encounter AI every day on your smartphone, tablet, computer, and smart TV. Platforms like Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube use intelligent algorithms to make suggestions based on your behavior. They analyze the content you’ve watched in the past and recommend similar new movies, songs, and videos.

The advantage is that you can find what truly interests you in a vast sea of ​​content. But the result is also that you stay on these platforms longer and longer. So the feeling that many online services are addictive is no coincidence – they are tailored to you so that you never get bored.

Some modern TVs have built-in AI systems that improve picture quality. For example, upscaling can dramatically improve the picture quality of older movies and series. A movie originally available in Full HD, for example, can be upscaled to 4K resolution in real time.

A special chip in the TV calculates additional pixels, allowing you to enjoy sharper images without even noticing the AI ​​processing. Read our article to learn how this works and which TVs offer particularly good upscaling 4K TVs with the best (AI) upscaling: Tests & Comparison 2024.

AI can also optimize color reproduction by adjusting colors to the room lighting and environment, creating an immersive TV experience that draws you deeper into the action.

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers many possibilities for making your home smarter and more comfortable. From controlling room temperature and cleaning your home to personalized movie and music recommendations, AI offers a wide range of applications.

The smart home of the future is increasingly evolving into an intelligent assistant that supports you in your daily life and can anticipate your needs. With the help of AI-controlled devices, you can transform your home into a place where you feel comfortable and have to make fewer decisions.

If you are just getting started with smart home and AI, we recommend that you first purchase a single smart device to gain initial experience.