Philips Hue launches AI beta for lighting automation

At a demonstration at IFA, Philips Hue showed how to bypass an annoying home automation rule: Button 4 on a Hue dimmer temporarily disabled the dining room’s motion sensor. The feature is currently in beta and is due to roll out in October under the name Custom AI Behaviors, which can be used to create complex if-then automations in natural language.

The difference is not just the chat window. The existing Hue app was good at simple, time-based routines, but quickly became confusing when multiple triggers and actions were combined. Users can now specify, for example, that only a dimmed night-light should turn on at night, while the normal, time-based color temperature should apply during the day. The system needs information such as “awake” or “asleep,” perhaps provided by pressing a button, but can assemble the rest of the logic on its own. The proposed automation can then be accepted, modified and edited again later.

The technical limitation is clear: Custom AI Behaviors works only with the Hue Bridge Pro. The automation logic runs locally on the bridge, while the AI assistant operates in the cloud. For this purpose, Hue developed a simplified, domain-specific programming language and deployed the GLM model family with open weights. According to Chief Technology Officer George Yianni, this should provide more control over the model actually running. The automation engine is also intended to be available to third-party developers.

Another outstanding issue is also getting a solution. Hue plans to back up the scenes, room assignments and rules currently stored only on the Hue Bridge and the Hue Bridge Pro in the cloud; the launch is planned for early next year, but no specific date has been given. Connections to devices outside the Hue ecosystem are also being added: Hue switches are set to control Sonos speakers, with The Verge reporting an update in November and heise online saying it will arrive “starting at the end of the year.” Nanoleaf Shapes can be integrated from September 3 using a Hue Zigbee control module priced at 40 euros; at launch, however, the same panels cannot be accessed simultaneously through both the Hue and Nanoleaf apps.

For Bridge Pro owners, the concrete change is that they no longer have to build a previously hard-to-reach connection through multiple programming windows: A sentence can link sensors, buttons, time and lighting functions into a single rule. Owners of other Hue bridges will not receive this AI feature. The automation engine is also intended to be available to third-party developers, while Sonos and Nanoleaf users will gradually be able to extend the Hue system beyond its own lights.