How AI Connects Chatbots and IoT Smart Homes

Devin Morrissey
BotPublication
Published in
4 min readAug 29, 2020

Image Source: Pexels

You may ask yourself how systems as seemingly disparate as chatbots and smart homes running on the Internet of Things (IoT) can share a common thread. In fact, these technologies share the same underlying component: the use of artificial intelligence.

A longtime dream of science fiction, AI now is part of our daily lives, smoothing processes and improving business across industries. We rely on AI to simplify and better a wide variety of tasks. Whether by improving customer service, automating business functions, or enhancing the at-home experience, computer processes that automate executable tasks are changing the way we live and work.

Here, we’ll discuss how AI has made its way to chatbots across industries and into smart homes to improve the lives of consumers and homebodies worldwide.

Chatbots

It’s hard to imagine an industry that doesn’t stand to benefit from the integration of chatbots. These AI-powered tools give businesses a leg-up on the competition by allowing for instant responses, customer assistance, and better communication.

In supply chain, shopping, and food preparation, chatbots have made headway into life and business processes. Here’s how:

Chatbots in Supply Chain

Arguably nowhere is flawless communication as essential as it is in the supply chain industry. Without correct times, dates, addresses, and routes, goods can be lost or delayed for an indefinite period. Luckily, chatbots are transforming the way supply chains and inventory managers conduct business.

By providing real-time accurate data across locations, chatbots keep a supply chain secure. Additionally, they can register inventory and submit requests automatically, always ensuring a business is properly managed.

Chatbots in Shopping

Whether you are shopping in-store retail or via an e-commerce site, chatbots can help. By pairing your needs and personal data with your shopping experience, digital assistants improve what any consumer browses and buys, building revenues and increasing satisfaction in turn.

Chatbots in shopping can create a fully customized experience based on shopper data. With the ability of AI to tailor content to suit a shopper’s needs, digital assistants are propagating across retailers.

Chatbots in the Food Industry

The potential of bots in foodservice and in-home preparation is limitless. With the application of these AI tools for every task you could imagine, innovative bot creators are sharing ways to improve their day-to-day food buying and preparing experiences. Chatbots stand to serve a broad variety of functions for the food industry at large. And the best part is, innovations in chatbots can transform the way daily chores are conducted at home!

  • Chatbots for grocery lists. In the case of Botlist contributor Marco Boretta, chatbots worked to build and share a communicative grocery list and housing needs. This interactive list functions through queries, learning the needs of a housing situation through input, and relaying these needs back in chat to the other networked members. This works splendidly for residential use. Applied to restaurants and chains, it could also be a great way to help manage inventory on the fly.
  • Chatbots for recipes and food preparation. Don’t know what to cook? Want to use only ingredients that are fresh and in-season? There are bots for all of that. By simply typing in relevant ingredients, times, and more, cooks of all levels are finding, creating, and building there skills in the kitchen with the help of AI. These bots make recommendations based on input, and the chef does the rest!

Chatbots for grocery lists and food preparation can make the at-home food preparation experience simpler and easier. However, that’s not all the underlying AI tech looks to improve in your everyday home life. Through smart homes powered by the Internet of Things, you can have the convenience of technology in all your home appliances.

IoT Smart Homes

The Internet of Things functions across a variety of devices, the latest trend being smart home products that automate certain household processes. These devices rely on AI functions to manage your home for maximum comfort.

For example, you can integrate your chatbots for managing a grocery list to your smart refrigerator. Such a device can tell you when you’re running low on a certain item so you can quickly add it to your list. But this is just one of the many ways technology and convenience are being integrated into the smart home experience.

First Choice Power lists six areas in which this technology has been adapted for modern homes:

  • Smart thermostats
  • A/C control
  • Motion sensors
  • Smart thermometers
  • Smart theatres
  • Smart blinds

These smart devices access a network through IoT to maintain and manage data via cloud technology. AI powers these functions, monitoring data and making instantaneous decisions to suit your set preferences.

As we adopt this technology into the most intimate of spaces, the use of AI and IoT begs the question: are they secure? IoT devices face risks that might never be encountered with traditional tech. Luckily, new cybersecurity solutions are being integrated all the time by highly trained and educated IT professionals.

AI for Everyone

The AI functions that enable bots across the web have found a home in across mediums, industries, and platforms. Among these developments, chatbots and IoT in smart homes are creating a new world of AI integration.

The wide variety of uses for bots and AI mean there’s something for every type of person when it comes to implementing this tech in daily life. Where do you think we will see bots and AI next?

--

--

Devin Morrissey
BotPublication

Devin prides himself on being a jack of all trades; his career trajectory is more a zigzag than an obvious trend, just the way he likes it.