Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Gemini is getting smarter and a lot less annoying for smart home voice controls

Google's Gemini fixes one of the most frustrating smart home problems.

Add as a preferred source on Google
Google-gemini-for-home-early-access-rollout
Google

After listening to users’ feedback, Google is starting to roll out a new round of updates to Gemini for Home. And this time around, the focus is simple: fix what’s been driving people crazy. In a recent tweet, Anish Kattukaran, Chief Product Officer for Gemini for Home, said that the team has been “heads down working on improvements based on your feedback,” with a number of fixes and updates going live across Gemini for Home, the Google Home app, automations, and supported devices.

Commands for rooms are finally smarter

If you’ve ever said something like “turn off the kitchen” and watched the smart assistant shut down far more than just the lights, you’re not alone. According to the executive, Gemini has improved how it targets smart devices with better isolation, starting with room-based voice commands.

We’ve been heads down working on improvements based on your feedback. Looking forward to sharing a number of fixes and updates today across Gemini for Home, the home app, automations and a number of our devices.

— Anish Kattukaran (@AnishKattukaran) March 2, 2026

So now, when you say “turn off the kitchen”, Gemini will intelligently target just the lights; rather than turning off every other smart plug or connected devices assigned to that room. This might sound small on paper, but for anyone with smart plugs connected to refrigerators, routers, or always-on appliances, this is a big quality-of-life change.

No more random device grouping

Another major improvement is how Gemini handles unassigned or loosely categorized devices. In the past, devices that weren’t clearly assigned to a specific room could get lumped into broad requests, leading to unexpected behavior. So a general command could be interpreted differently, causing actions to affect gadgets unintentionally.

With this update:

  • Unassigned devices will no longer be incorrectly grouped
  • Device targeting is more precise
  • Voice commands should feel more predictable
Recommended Videos

The essence of the change is that Gemini is becoming better at understanding the user’s intent. While room-level targeting is the headline feature, Kattukaran also hinted at broader updates rollingout across Gemini for Home, the Google Home app, smart home automations, and some other supported devices.

Vikhyaat Vivek
Vikhyaat Vivek is a tech journalist and reviewer with seven years of experience covering consumer hardware, with a focus on…
WhatsApp can now open and edit PDFs without making you download them first
Adobe Acrobat is adding built-in viewing and annotation tools for PDFs shared through WhatsApp on larger screens
Text, Person, Aircraft

Adobe is making PDF attachments much less annoying in WhatsApp. Its new Acrobat integration lets you open a PDF and mark it up without downloading the file or leaving the conversation.

The feature is available today through WhatsApp Web and the Windows app. The headline comes with an important caveat, though. This isn’t full PDF editing. You can review and annotate a document, but you can’t rewrite its original text or rearrange the layout.

Read more
Substack now lets you check if a post was written by AI
A new Pangram-powered scanner lets you check posts, notes, and replies for signs of AI writing.
Video playing on Substack.

Substack is giving readers a way to check whether the post they're reading was written by a human or by a chatbot. The company has partnered with AI-detection firm Pangram to introduce new tools that will let users scan posts, notes, and replies for AI-generated text. CEO Chris Best introduced the features in a post titled "Against Claudefishing," his term for content that leans on AI while presenting itself as human work.

How the scanning tool works

Read more
China’s AI talent shortage has tech giants recruiting teenagers
Forget campus recruiting, china's biggest tech firms are betting on teenage coders.
Artificial Intelligence

A 13-year-old boy in Hangzhou has already won national AI competitions and built a following of more than 136,000 people online, all while his dad tries to figure out how to guide him through a field that barely existed when he himself was growing up. That family's situation, first reported by Rest of World, says a lot about where China's tech industry is heading right now.

Companies used to wait for graduates to walk through the door. Now they're reaching further back, first to undergrads, and increasingly to teenagers, hoping to spot rare talent before anyone else gets to them.

Read more