GE Partners With Google to Power Future Smart Home Devices

GE Appliances has signed a deal with Google Cloud to better integrate its future smart home devices into the platform and its data and AI services. The multi-year deal will streamline the process of adding Google’s smart home software into GE’s products, including Google Assistant, and the two companies will work on bringing the Google Cloud Vision AI to upcoming devices.

Smart GE Google

Google Cloud encompasses a range of services and tools that GE Appliances can utilize more fully, thanks to the new arrangement. The platform’s analytics and machine learning software provide several ways to measure and upgrade smart home tech intelligence and capabilities. The direct connection simplifies those improvements especially when it extends to other Google platforms like Google Assistant and Android. That includes more personalization and customized adjustments to how the appliances operate. The same goes for the commercial partners of GE Appliances, who will have more control through Google Cloud of the larger collections of their products, like a hotel relying on GE’s smart lights throughout its property. In other words, the next iterations of GE Appliances smart lights, refrigerators, ovens, and other home goods may be especially good at interfacing with Google’s AI services, or at least more so than they can currently.

“As the fastest-growing appliance manufacturing company in the United States and with more than a century of industry experience, we are committed to continuing our evolution and fulfilling our promise to deliver the best appliances to our owners and customers,” GE Appliances CDO Viren Shah said in a statement. “Bringing together Google and GE Appliances to co-innovate and build advanced technologies is a key driver propelling this evolution forward.”

Smart Home Connections

Marrying smart hardware more closely with AI and machine learning platforms has become more common in the smart home space of late. GE’s Cync, formerly known as C by GE, has been moving in that direction for some time, augmenting its lights with switches that only require three wires and no hub or neutral wire last year to widen the variety of bulbs and voice assistants they can work with, for example. Samsung has been particularly open to the interoperability paradigm. The company allowed its smart refrigerators to have Amazon Alexa’s voice assistant as an option for the first time recently and has been working closely with Google to make a new unified smart device platform. GE Appliances and Google Cloud represent a potentially enormous example of the same idea. The deal could have a lot of implications if it achieves the goals of both companies, accelerating the same push among other manufacturers and cloud platforms.

“GE Appliances is an award-winning, smart home innovator that gives consumers the forward-thinking features and capabilities they want and expect,” Google Cloud managing director of manufacturing and industrial Dominik Wee said. “Marrying GEA’s expertise in smart home appliances with Google Cloud’s data analytics and AI/ML will deliver industry-leading, innovative appliances and digital experiences that will delight consumers for years to come.”

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