Last week, Amazon and Google kick-started what could be the next chapter of the smart home. Their new voice assistants, Alexa Plus and Gemini for Home , have been rebuilt from the ground up on generative AI and large language models to be more conversational, understand context, and take actions. This marks the biggest shift in home control since the companies launched their original smart speakers over a decade ago. In the years since, smart home adoption has stalled — because it’s complicated