Philips Hue’s AI lighting assistant arrives with early limits

Philips Hue has made Custom AI Behaviors available in its app for owners of the Hue Bridge Pro. The feature lets users describe a desired lighting routine in natural language, then uses AI to create an automation for the Bridge.

Hue founder and head of technology George Yianni previously described the feature as a way to translate those requests into a programming language used by the Bridge. But an early test reported by HueBlog found that it did not always follow instructions correctly.

HueBlog asked the assistant to turn on specific lights at sunset and use different color themes each time. The AI understood the request but switched on all the lights instead of only those specified. When asked to correct the behavior, it displayed an error message. The app does not currently let users edit the AI-created routines, unlike Apple’s Shortcuts on macOS and iOS.

Custom AI Behaviors and the previously launched SpatialAware scene optimization are limited to Hue Bridge Pro owners. The app update also brings easier Screen Sync setup and improved scene recommendations to other Hue users. The Hue app is available for iOS and Android.