Voice control in the smart home is not a new concept. But it’s still one area that consumers have been slow on the uptake. Consider this: Apple’s Siri, one of the earliest voice platforms, turns 15 years old this year—it debuted on the iPhone 4S. Google Assistant launched (as Google Now) the following year, and Amazon’s Alexa was soon to follow in 2014. Heck, even in the CI channel, Josh.ai celebrated its 10-year anniversary last year.
It’s taken time, but adoption of those platforms seems to be reaching an inflection point. Today, around 81 percent of Americans say they use voice tech daily or weekly, with 68 percent saying they’ve increased their usage over the past year, according to a recent survey by TELUS Digital Experience, a customer experience firm. And while usage is increasing, so too is awareness—TELUS found that 25 percent of those surveyed said they tried a voice platform for the first time in the month prior to their survey.
This is a strong improvement over a CI-specific bit of research that I conducted back in 2021 on behalf of Oasys Residential Technology Group. At that time, less than half of the membership (46 percent) said their clients showed an interest in utilizing voice control systems in their homes. And, for what it’s worth, I’ve long considered luxury homeowners to be your very early adopter type, meaning they’d be most likely to want to employ something like a voice control system in their homes.
So, with all of that in mind, it’s exciting to see another entrant nearing its debut in this channel. During my time at the International Builders’ Show last month, I had the chance to demo Savant’s voice platform, which is still in beta. There, J.C. Murphy, Savant’s Chief Commercial Officer, walked me through a demo of the platform, which is capable of controlling the lighting, shading, climate control, entertainment, and more.
Leveraging their myriad product partnerships and a vast portfolio of in-house smart home solutions, the Savant AI platform looks to be an immediate challenger for one of the most integrated and complete solutions in the channel. Murphy’s demo showed the natural language abilities of the “Savi” assistant (or is it “Savy?” “Savie?”). It was able to understand multiple prompts in a single exchange, make lighting and entertainment recommendations based on a variety of circumstances, and proved to be very helpful in walking a new user through all of the ways they could tap into the system—and is able to communicate in one of 48 different languages, to boot.
The leap into the voice control realm is a natural next step for the company. Just a few years ago, they rolled out an AI engine that was designed to work with Siri, pulling together natural language prompts, AirTag-based triggers, and other location-based controls to expand control of the Savant smart home experience. This new platform effectively cuts the middleman out of the equation, giving Savant the ability to mold the experience fully in their vision, and potentially expand it into other areas that they operate in.
When asked if the platform was a competitor to the likes of a Josh or Alexa, the Savant team posited that their AI assistant wasn’t like the others. They’re not wrong in that regard—whereas Josh, for example, has to seek out integrations and get any new partner to adopt their protocol, Savant’s is coming to market with an entire ecosystem of their own. Their products generally already work behind the scenes with one another. This is them adding a layer of simplified control on top of that.
But, at the end of the day, the concept is similar in nature, which is not a bad thing. Consumers need options. And Savant’s platform looks to be an incredibly strong one that gives current brand loyalists a very capable level of voice control.
At present, the platform is an app-based assistant. No hardware was readily available, nor did their team mention plans to launch a physical smart speaker with the assistant built into it. Still, Savi (that’s how I’m gonna spell it) left me impressed in its beta state, meaning things should only be exponentially better and more robust by the time it is deemed market-ready.
