'Home Assistant' to get its own voice separate from Siri or Alexa

LOS ANGELES: No need for Google, Siri or Alexa to speak with your AI-powered smart home platform anymore. 'Home Assistant', an open-source platform for smart home interaction, would soon be having all its voice commands localized.

The platform's founder, Paulus Schoutsen, took to the official 'Home Assistant' blog last week to announce the launching of the project which would give the housing platform its own voice assistant with a set of basic sentences to start with. "It is our goal for 2023 to let users control Home Assistant in their own language," the blog read.

According to a report by US-based tech portal 'The Verge', the Schoutsen-run company 'Nabu Casa', which provides cloud services for 'Home Assistant', has hired well-known developer Michael Hansen for the development of the local voice assistant.

Hansen previously has the voice-assistant product 'Rhasspy' to his credit. Schoutsen's blog post highlighted the platform's priority to make 'Home Assistant' accessible in multiple languages.

"Our #1 priority is supporting different languages. There are enough projects out there trying to create an English voice assistant. But for us, that just doesn't cut it. People need to be able to speak in their own language, as that is the most accessible and only acceptable language for a voice assistant for the smart home," the blog read.

As per 'The Verge', while most voice assistants like Apple's 'Siri' or Google Assistant require internet connections to run, Home Assistant's platform would be entirely local.