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Tapo, the smart home brand owned by networking giant TP-Link, is launching an AI assistant at CES this year — because isn’t everyone?
Aireal is designed to “bring AI to real life” (geddit?), according to the company, and will help you “understand your home, quickly fix Wi-Fi issues, and control your devices using natural language.” The Assistant will work across TP-Link smart home products and Wi-Fi mesh devices and will work in the Tapo and Deco apps.
This should allow you to use natural language (via in-app dictation) to create new smart home routines or control devices by describing what you want to happen. For example, “Start vacuuming after I leave the house.” You can also ask questions like “Why is this device offline?” And get help troubleshooting.
Aireal is also coming to Tapo’s surveillance cameras, and the company says this will enable AI-generated text descriptions of what the camera captured, rather than just a vague alert saying “pet detected.” It can also integrate recurring alerts to reduce notification fatigue and lets you search your snaps with just a few words to find what you need, like: “Show me the package that arrived yesterday.”
Aireal is bringing facial recognition technology to Tapo cameras for the first time. If you enable the new feature, you can be alerted when the camera detects a person, as well as that person’s identity. The company says Face ID information is stored in the cloud, encrypted, and transmitted securely.
Aireal will launch in Early Access on January 6 on select products, including Tapo’s newest security cameras that debuted at CES this week: the Tapo C645D (2K dual-lens solar camera/tilt camera), Tapo C465 (4K battery-powered camera), and Tapo C710 (2K wired tilt camera) combo.
Aireal will have a broader rollout in the US later this year. There will be a subscription fee to use the assistant, but the company says the price has not yet been determined.