{"id":685300,"date":"2026-05-22T00:49:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T00:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/685300\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T00:49:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T00:49:15","slug":"the-cost-of-the-smart-home-is-going-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/685300\/","title":{"rendered":"The cost of the smart home is going up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Selling the smart home has been hard. Even Amazon has lost money<\/a> in the space, despite putting hundreds of millions of Echo devices in people\u2019s homes. Google has also reportedly struggled<\/a> to turn a profit from its substantial investment in Nest<\/a>. But now Google is seeing dollar signs in the prospect of selling AI-driven subscriptions in the smart home. And it\u2019s not alone.<\/p>\n

At Google I\/O<\/a> this week, Google announced<\/a> it\u2019s expanding its Gemini for Home APIs<\/a> to allow companies to integrate more of its Gemini-powered smart home features into their own apps. In a blog post<\/a>, Google\u2019s Ravi Akella, director of product management for the Home Platform, said this will enable \u201cservice providers and hardware manufacturers to build monetizable, proactive services that care for users and their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

These features include those currently offered on its Google Home platform and Nest cameras<\/a>, such as AI-generated text descriptions<\/a> from cameras that tell you \u201ca child is riding a bike on the lawn\u201d rather than just \u201cperson detected,\u201d and Ask Home<\/a>, which lets you query your home with natural language, such as search your camera feeds<\/a> to find when the UPS driver came by.<\/p>\n

Google is also expanding access to its Home Brief feature, which summarizes what happened around your home at the end of each day, to third parties, and adding the ability to use natural language to create routines<\/a>, such as \u201cmake my home look occupied when I\u2019m not here.\u201d<\/p>\n

1\/3Google\u2019s Home Brief summarizes the day\u2019s activity from cameras and devices around a home. Screenshot by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

Companies like ADT<\/a> and AT&T<\/a> are already using Google\u2019s Home APIs in their home security systems, and this expansion will allow third parties to put the Google Home Premium subscription and its related features into their own app and subscription services, according to Google.<\/p>\n

So, now your ISP, wireless carrier, and home security provider could be selling you a smart home powered by Gemini AI and even build their own hardware to run it. Google also announced it\u2019s allowing third parties to build smart speakers with Gemini built in<\/a>, as well as security cameras that work with Gemini \u2014 something Walmart did with its Onn cameras last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The push toward subscription models is part of a wider shift in the smart home \u2014 the hope that AI\u2019s new capabilities may finally provide a sustainable revenue stream for smart home companies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But their revenue stream may become your subscription fatigue \u2014 and based on my experience with these new capabilities<\/a>, there\u2019s still a long way to go until they deliver real value. Today, it\u2019s more like enhanced computer vision than genuine intelligence. And while more descriptive alerts can be useful, they can also be inaccurate. One AI-powered camera warned me of a brown bear in my backyard in coastal South Carolina. (It was my dog).<\/p>\n

To really change the game for the smart home and become something worth paying for, AI needs to become proactive \u2014 understand context, and detect anomalies. Rather than you having to set up smart home routines to tell you when something happens, your home should understand what\u2019s normal and flag what isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

If your smart home can know that you left the gate open around the time you normally let the dog out into the yard, and alert you before the dog can escape, or detect that an elderly parent hasn\u2019t moved around their home for a few hours and prompt you to check in, that could add real value. Ring has a new beta feature that works toward this: Unusual Event Alerts<\/a>. It only notifies you about things it considers unusual \u2014 but this means there\u2019s a risk it could miss something.<\/p>\n

Reliably finding the anomalies and alerting you to them, rather than sending you an AI-generated essay about your home, is where real value lies. Google\u2019s pitch promises \u201cproactive services that care for users and their homes\u201d \u2014 and while they may argue that filtering notifications using computer vision is proactive, that\u2019s only part of the solution.<\/p>\n

The rising costs of smart home ownership<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the other challenge. When and if AI in the smart home can deliver genuine value, I\u2019m not convinced people will be willing to pay more for it. Subscription fatigue is real, and AI has already driven up the cost of smart home ownership. Amazon<\/a> has started charging $20 a month for Alexa Plus if you don\u2019t pay for Prime, and Google<\/a> has put many Gemini for Home features behind a paywall.<\/p>\n

Top-tier subscriptions from Ring<\/a>, Google Nest,<\/a> and camera company Arlo<\/a> have risen sharply in recent years, all now boasting AI features<\/a>. Ring\u2019s has doubled<\/a> from $100 in 2021 to $200 annually, and Google Nest\u2019s has gone from $120 in 2021 to $200<\/a>. Arlo\u2019s yearly camera-only subscription rose from $117 in 2021 to $216 in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Top-tier subscriptions have risen sharply in recent years, costing $200 or more<\/p>\n

Of course, if you\u2019re already paying for a home security monitoring plan (Ring\u2019s $200 sub includes that), AI features can add value by solving a genuine pain point: filtering camera footage<\/a>. The subscription increases are also due to higher costs for the companies. Many now offer 2k and 4k video \u2014 higher resolution is needed to process images more accurately \u2014 and running computer vision models isn\u2019t cheap. But those higher costs don\u2019t fully explain the price creep, and the question still remains: Are they worth it yet?<\/p>\n

For years, companies have struggled to make money selling connected devices for the home. The intelligence boost promised by a new wave of AI techniques seemed like a life raft for the industry. But charging people more for features that haven\u2019t yet proven their value isn\u2019t the way to go.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Google\u2019s bet that companies should use its AI tech to start charging you more seems premature. Add in that Google has a long history of abandoning developer platforms (see Works with Nest<\/a>, Brillo, Weave<\/a>, Android Things<\/a>, Conversational Actions<\/a>, I could go on<\/a>), and any partner is betting twice: that the AI will get there and that Google will stick around long enough to see it through.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, backlash against features like Ring\u2019s Search Party<\/a>, which uses AI to search footage in the cloud, has opened people\u2019s eyes to potential misuses and dangers of these technologies. As companies race to turn AI into that long-awaited business model, many consumers are turning away from pushing more of their data to the cloud, toward cameras and services that operate locally<\/a> in their homes. An added benefit for consumers: Those don\u2019t come with a monthly bill.<\/p>\n

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Jennifer Pattison TuohyClose\"Jennifer<\/p>\n

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy<\/p>\n

Senior Reviewer, Smart Home<\/p>\n

Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n

FollowFollow<\/p>\n

See All by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy<\/a><\/p>\n

AnalysisClose<\/p>\n

Analysis<\/p>\n

Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n

FollowFollow<\/p>\n

See All Analysis<\/a><\/p>\n

GoogleClose<\/p>\n

Google<\/p>\n

Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n

FollowFollow<\/p>\n

See All Google<\/a><\/p>\n

Google I\/O 2026Close<\/p>\n

Google I\/O 2026<\/p>\n

Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n

FollowFollow<\/p>\n

See All Google I\/O 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

ReportClose<\/p>\n

Report<\/p>\n

Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n

FollowFollow<\/p>\n

See All Report<\/a><\/p>\n

Smart HomeClose<\/p>\n

Smart Home<\/p>\n

Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n

FollowFollow<\/p>\n

See All Smart Home<\/a><\/p>\n

TechClose<\/p>\n

Tech<\/p>\n

Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n

FollowFollow<\/p>\n

See All Tech<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Selling the smart home has been hard. Even Amazon has lost money in the space, despite putting hundreds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,2209,276,277,49,48,192,249858,1660,1847,64,61],"class_list":["post-685300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-analysis","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-google","tag-google-i-o-2026","tag-report","tag-smart-home","tag-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}