The cost of the smart home is going up

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Google is expanding its AI-powered Gemini for Home capabilities beyond its cameras and smart speakers to other manufacturers to sell more subscriptions. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Selling the smart home has been hard.

Even Amazon has lost money in the space, despite putting hundreds of millions of Echo devices in people's homes. Google has also reportedly struggled to turn a profit from its substantial investment in Nest.

But now Google is seeing dollar signs in the prospect of selling AI-driven subscriptions in the smart home. At Google I/O this week, Google announced it's expanding its Gemini for Home APIs to allow companies to integrate more of its Gemini-powered smart home features into their own apps.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.