Google Brings Gemini AI To Home For Smarter Nest Cameras, Doorbells And Speakers

Home automation is one of those things that's both much older than people think—the foundations were laid in 1966—and yet still quite controversial in the era of cloud-based everything. Typically, your response to modern smart home features is either "absolutely not" or "more please, and thank you!" If you're in the latter category, you'll likely be excited to hear that Google's now integrating its Gemini AI features into its Home and Nest product lines, enabling quite a few improvements through the new Gemini for Home update.

Gemini has already replaced Assistant on Android smartphones, and the advanced LLM offers a feature known as "Gemini Live" where you can have natural conversations in which you can chat freely, interrupt, and ask follow-up questions, all without requiring specific device names or commands. This mode is initiated by saying "Hey Google, let's chat," and Google says it's great for brainstorming or practicing homework.


Impressively, the AI can understand context in your natural language. The tech giant says that you can give a command like "turn on the lights so I can cook dinner" and it will understand that you mean the lights in the kitchen, even if you're currently in the kitchen. You can also give complex commands with multiple requests all in one sentence, and purportedly, the AI will perform each task individually.

The new Gemini features extend to the cameras as well. Basically, Gemini is multi-modal, and that means that it can watch your camera feeds and answer questions about what happened. For a couple of examples, you can ask "what time did the kids get home," and instead of "package detected," Gemini can tell you "a delivery driver placed two packages on your porch at 12:13 PM." Google also suggested the use case of "did something eat my plants?" at which point Gemini may tell you when rabbits were seen in your garden. It's a pretty fancy feature.


Naturally, all of this can be tied into your Google account, and it will be managed through the Google Home app, which has been fully redesigned to accommodate these features that are rolling out this month in the US. Of course, you'll need compatible smart home hardware, and Google's got you covered there, too.

The company is just rolling out new Nest Cams for both indoor and outdoor use, as well as a new Nest Doorbell and early next year, a new Home Speaker. However, don't worry—you don't necessarily have to have the latest hardware to make use of the new app or features. In fact, Google says that all existing hardware manufactured since 2015 supports the new technology.


The new Nest cameras support 2K HDR video, and have a wider field of view, with the indoor/outdoor cameras going from 130 to 152 degrees, and the doorbell camera moving to a 1:1 aspect ratio with a 145-degree diagonal field of view. Google says the outdoor hardware is made from a new resin that is formulated for superior UV resistance, meaning that they shouldn't fade as easily as the old models, and they come three colors: white, gray, and red.

• New Google Nest Cam, Indoor, Wired: $99.99 at Amazon
• New Google Nest Cam, Outdoor, Wired: $149.99 at Amazon
• New Google Nest Doorbell, Wired: $179.99 at Amazon
• Google Audio Smart Speakers, Wireless, 2-pack: $145.99 at Amazon
• Google Audio Smart Speakers, Wireless, Single: $69.98 at Amazon
• Google Nest Mini Smart Speaker: $59.99 at Amazon
• New Google Home Speaker: Pre-order for $99.99 (Arrives next Spring)

Don't forget that to make use of these smart features, you will need to be subscribed to either Google's Home Premium services or its AI services. Home Premium Standard costs $10 month or $100 a year, while Home Premium Advanced, which doubles the price, gets you double the video history, a 10-day backlog of 24/7 video history, descriptive notifications, and daily summaries. Alternatively, if you subscribe to Google AI Pro, you get Home Premium Standard for free, and you can add Home Premium Advanced for $10 more. AI Ultra subscribers get it all for free.