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Your AI agents can now control your Google Home devices

Your AI agents can now control your Google Home devices

AI TechCrunch
Google Home now supports the Model Context Protocol, allowing third-party AI agents like ChatGPT to natively control smart home devices.
What: Google opened early access to the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for the Google Home ecosystem, currently limited to U.S. Google Home Premium Advanced subscribers. Users must configure a Google Cloud project to allow agents to interact with devices like Nest thermostats and Matter-enabled hardware.
Why it matters: This move turns Google's smart home ecosystem into an open platform for external AI agents, potentially ending the era of walled-garden voice assistants in favor of more capable, model-agnostic control.
Takeaway: If you have a Google Home Premium Advanced subscription, you can connect your AI agent of choice by configuring a new Google Cloud project via the Google Home Developer Center.
Decoder
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP): A standardized, open-source protocol that allows AI agents to securely connect to data sources, tools, and local devices, providing a common interface for cross-platform integration.
Original article

Smart home owners will soon be able to control their devices connected to Google Home via an AI agent. On Wednesday, Google rolled out early access to its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for its Google Home ecosystem, which will allow any AI agent that supports MCP — like Claude, Hermes, OpenClaw, ChatGPT, and Google Antigravity — to securely work with their smart home devices and access their event history.

This update will allow people to use natural language instructions to do things like review their camera summaries, monitor smart home activity, control their connected devices, and build their own custom smart home dashboards.

To get the connection set up, users will need to create a Google Cloud project and configure it to use Home MCP. They will then provide the MCP configuration details to their agent of choice and ask it to set it up. The agent will then ask them to sign in and grant permissions. (A setup guide will also be offered in the Google Home Developer Center.)

The system will support any device in the Google Home ecosystem, including Google Nest doorbells and thermostats and “Works with Google Home” (or Matter) devices, like light bulbs.

Google already supports MCP in other areas of its business, including in its Google Cloud and data platforms, developer tools, and Google Workspace, for instance. Support for Google Home is targeted more directly at consumers who are experimenting with AI agents designed to handle everyday tasks.

The company said access to the MCP will roll out starting today and continuing over the coming weeks to subscribers who pay for Google Home Premium Advanced in the U.S. This is the more expensive, $20-per-month subscription tier that provides features like longer event-based video history, descriptive notifications and detailed alerts, tools to search video history, daily summaries, and more.

Google wouldn’t comment on if or when the MCP would roll out more broadly, such as to other subscription tiers or markets.

Google is also soliciting feedback from early adopters during this period by way of its Smart Home for Developers Community, it says.

An earlier version of this post misstated the rollout’s start. It is today, Wednesday, not Tuesday.

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