At this year’s IFA technology show, appliance makers appeared to have decided they were tired of letting people run their own homes, with vacuums, refrigerators, cat litter boxes and aquariums all seeking to become part of one big AI system. AI was plastered across seemingly every other product, sometimes put to genuinely interesting use and sometimes feeling like marketing decided “smart” was no longer smart enough in 2026. Although homes have been called “smart” for years, that intelligence often amounted to replacing a wall switch with an app, cloud connection and essentially the same switch, while users managed more apps, accounts, passwords and notifications. The industry is now trying to change that equation by putting an AI layer above devices, intended to understand what is happening in the home and manage them. The idea of a self-managing home is hardly new, promised for nearly two decades, but making features work together still requires someone to tell the house what to do, and products from other manufacturers often require another app. Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant essentially remained remote controls people could talk to, and the current generation of AI-powered homes is supposed to close that gap.