SwitchBot Unveils AI-Powered Smart Home Innovations at IFA 2025

SwitchBot's New AI Art Frame Lets You Give Prompts to Generate Art in Seconds

Expertise Smart home | Smart security | Home tech | Energy savings | A/V SwitchBot arrived at IFA (Innovation for All) 2025 with a lot to show off, including fluffy home Kata robots and the Acemate Tennis Robot, complete with training programs. But what really caught my smart home eyes was an application of generative AI I've never seen before. SwitchBot introduced an AI Art Frame, and it represents a completely new future for at-home wall art. The AI Art Frame's concept and design are easy to grasp and made me wonder why the idea wasn't already more widespread. It uses a colored E-Ink (when was the last time you heard that?) surface that mimics a hanging picture and is made to work with IKEA frames, among other options. Connect the frame to the SwitchBot app, and it allows you to enter text prompts or inspirational ideas for the Art Frame to work with. The Frame then generates its own unique image using AI. If you want to switch to a real photo, you can upload one of your pics for the frame to work with directly, too. Thanks to the low-power E-Ink, the Frame's battery can last for up to two years and you can enter new prompts whenever you feel like. The applications for this kind of frame - as long as you don't mind the vagaries of AI art - are almost limitless. You could change the picture for the seasons, for the book you're reading or the game you're playing, for the latest cartoon your kid is obsessed with, to mimic a different historical artist every month, or on any whim. And since SwitchBot is offering its Art Frame is sizes from 7.3 inches to 31-5 inches, it can fit in all kinds of spots from a desk to home wall. SwitchBot says its AI Art Frame will be ready to ship in November, with pricing info to come at a later date. I can't wait to try it, and I wonder if AI art like this has a place in the average home - it could prove very promising.

This Digital Frame Lets You Make Custom Art For Your Walls in Seconds

Expertise Smart home | Smart security | Home tech | Energy savings | A/V SwitchBot arrived at IFA (Innovation for All) 2025 with a lot to show off, including fluffy home Kata robots and the Acemate Tennis Robot, complete with training programs. But what really caught my smart home eyes was an application of generative AI I've never seen before. SwitchBot introduced an AI Art Frame, and it represents a completely new future for at-home wall art. The AI Art Frame's concept and design are easy to grasp and made me wonder why the idea wasn't already more widespread. It uses a colored E-Ink (when was the last time you heard that?) surface that mimics a hanging picture and is made to work with IKEA frames, among other options. Connect the frame to the SwitchBot app and it allows you to enter text prompts or inspirational ideas for the Art Frame to work with. The Frame then generates its own unique image using AI. If you want to switch to a real photo, you can upload one of your pics for the frame to work with directly, too. Thanks to the low-power E-Ink, the Frame's battery can last for up to two years and you can enter new prompts whenever you want. The applications for this kind of frame -- as long as you don't mind the vagaries of AI art -- are almost limitless. You could change the picture for the seasons, for the book you're reading or the game you're playing, for the latest cartoon your kid is obsessed with, to mimic a different historical artist every month, or on any whim. And because SwitchBot is offering its Art Frame in sizes from 7.3 inches to 31.5 inches, it can fit in all kinds of spots from a desk to a home wall. SwitchBot says its AI Art Frame will be ready to ship in November, with pricing info to come at a later date. I can't wait to try it and I wonder if AI art like this has a place in the average home. It could prove promising.

SwitchBot launches three AI-powered smart home products -- including a pair of robots

It was inevitable that AI would be everywhere at IFA this year, but the smart home is where we're really seeing action. SwitchBot, known for its quirky and clever home gadgets, launched three new AI-powered products this week: a smart home AI Hub, a colorful E Ink AI Art Frame, and two animated AI pets named Niko and Noa. The SwitchBot AI Hub is a souped-up version of SwitchBot's existing smart home hubs, which are designed to connect and control its Bluetooth devices, such as smart shades, locks, and lights. This model adds both on-device and cloud-based AI, working with SwitchBot's cameras and sensors to capture, process, and interpret what's happening in your home. For example, SwitchBot says the hub could detect an event like "an elderly person falling" and use that as a trigger for an automation. This "event comprehension" uses a vision language model (VLM), which requires a cloud connection and a subscription. Meanwhile, the on-device AI can identify faces, pets, vehicles, furniture, and more -- helping you keep track of things. The company says you can even ask it things like, "Show me where I left my phone," and it will pull up relevant footage. Specs-wise, the AI Hub is a big upgrade over the Hub 3, featuring dual-band Wi-Fi, extended Bluetooth, and 32GB of built-in storage (expandable to 1TB). It can manage up to eight 2K cameras, stream locally via RTSP, and display footage on a monitor. The hub can support more than 100 SwitchBot devices and bridges up to 30 products into a Matter ecosystem. It's powered by a 6T AI chip. SwitchBot is also entering a new category with the AI Art Frame, a colorful E Ink Spectra 6 display that blends home decor with AI creativity. You can upload your own photos or generate artwork using prompts in the SwitchBot app, powered by the company's locally trained AI model. Available in 7.3-, 13.3-, and 31.5-inch sizes, the frame fits into standard Ikea frames and runs on battery power, allowing for flexible placement. SwitchBot says it can last up to two years on a single charge. And finally, SwitchBot is bringing an actual robot to IFA -- well, two. Noa and Niko are SwitchBot's new AI pets, part of its Kata friends series. Described as soft-bodied household robots "designed for companionship," videos of Noa and Niko show them flapping their arms and blinking their glowy blue eyes. They resemble fluffy penguins and, according to SwitchBot, they feature small wheels that allow them to move independently. The company also says that the AI-powered bots can "recognize family members, respond to gestures and emotions, and show feelings such as happiness, sadness, or jealousy," as well as learn your household routines. SwitchBot has not announced pricing or a release date for any of these products. However, given the company's track record of turning ambitious prototypes -- such as its multitasking CES robot -- into real products, these gadgets have a high likelihood of making it to market. I'll be getting hands-on time with all of them at IFA this week.

SwitchBot has ambitions to be the AI that powers your smart home

AI could bring the smart home closer to the Star Trek dream: a central "computer" that runs your home. At IFA this week, SwitchBot -- best known for its button-pushing robots -- is debuting a product that lays the groundwork for at least part of that vision. The new SwitchBot AI Hub combines local AI processing with a cloud-based visual language model (VLM) to interpret events in your home and use them to trigger automations, moving the company a small step closer to creating a truly intelligent home. Paired with SwitchBot's home security cameras, including its pan-tilt indoor camera and video doorbell, the AI Hub will "understand" events it detects, summarize them in text, and use that information as triggers for home automations, according to the company. For example, SwitchBot says it can recognize events such as "an elderly person falling" and take action. The hub can already identify pets, vehicles, furniture, and appliances locally, with facial recognition coming later this month. It also supports text search, allowing you to ask the SwitchBot app to search for an object or pet, and it will surface relevant footage. This is similar to the Ring Video Search feature that Amazon launched on Alexa Plus. However, Alexa can't yet use those events as triggers for smart home routines, which is what SwitchBot is claiming. SwitchBot's AI Hub lays the foundation for something much more ambitious. A "SwitchBot Vision" concept video the company shared shows its current devices, including its cameras, K12 Pro mobile platform, air purifier table, and its new mmWave presence sensor, all interacting with a version of the hub, which then commands and controls a humanoid robot to do things based on the inputs it receives. For example, it loads the laundry machine when the basket is full and makes breakfast when the sensors tell it "Master is waking up." (Yes, it calls the homeowner master. Yes, it's creepy.) This is clearly a vision that's far in the future -- the J.A.R.V.I.S.-style robot in the video, seen serving eggs and doing laundry, is most definitely not a robot SwitchBot is debuting at IFA this week. In fact, it most definitely looks like a person dressed up as a robot. However, it illustrates what appears to be at least one of the company's goals: a smart home that responds to its occupants. It also shows just how hard this will be to achieve. For agentic AI to be truly "in control" of our homes in this way, it needs devices capable of real action. If that's opening the shades, locking the front door, or vacuuming the floor, SwitchBot can handle it. But it can't go much further with the devices it has today. We've seen similar AI-powered smart home visions from larger companies like LG and Samsung at IFA, but even these appliance and electronics giants can't supply every piece of this puzzle alone. Interoperability and standards, such as Matter, will be key, as will the data and inputs that a home AI relies on to anticipate and respond to your needs. SwitchBot addresses this from both visual and physical perspectives by combining cameras with physical sensors. While cameras that analyze activities inside your home raise privacy concerns, the depth of context they can provide is a crucial piece of this puzzle. That's why SwitchBot's local-first approach feels like the right move -- keeping your smart home smart, while keeping your private life private.

his AI Box Lets You Search Your Security Camera Footage Using a Text Prompt

Dog got out? Left your phone somewhere? Those can be automation triggers. SwitchBot had a few AI-powered devices on display at IFA 2025; not just a furry little robot pet (I picked it up and it's not cuddly). They included an E Ink AI art display, which generates AI art on demand, an AI tennis robot that you can "play" matches against, and a couple of robot vacuums. We'll get to all of that, but the main thing that caught my eye was the SwitchBot AI Hub. It's not that the others aren't interestingâ€"of course they areâ€"it's that I love good, easy automation. The promise of the AI Hub is two-fold: it can access SwitchBot's Vision Language Model (VLM)â€"such models can interpret visuals and text at the same timeâ€"enabling natural language prompts that you can use both for setting up automations and searching connected security camera footage for events they recorded to its internal storage. It only supports SwitchBot's cameras for now, although the company says that could change later. Some examples include asking the AI Hub, via the SwitchBot app, when you left your phone somewhere in your house or when your dog got out. You can also set it to trigger automations based on events it identifies, like alerting you that your dog escaped. As for that local storage, the AI Hub comes with 32GB, but that's expandable up to 1TB using a microSD card slot on one side or one of the USB-C ports on the back. Unfortunately, automations using the AI Hub will cost money as you'll need a subscription to a cloud plan that the company will debut in October, according to a SwitchBot rep. They told me pricing is yet to be set. The AI Hub works with more than 100 devices and supports Matter if you have a Matter Bridge device. It can also connect to a display and show you the real-time streams from up to eight 2K-resolution SwitchBot cameras. Now, about the AI art frames. These use E Ink Spectra 6 color displays, and at least under the bright lights of the IFA show floor, they're very convincing as art prints. They come in 7.3-inch, 13.3-inch, and 31.5-inch sizes, last up to two years on a charge, and are compatible with Ikea frames, so you don't need to just use the ones they come with. As for what the display shows, it's, well, AI art. That means you can describe art you'd like to see, using the SwitchBot app, and it will show it on the frames. You're gonna be looking at art that's an approximation of something a human created, which was very obvious when I saw the framesâ€"both were clear simulacrums of Vincent van Gogh's "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear," and "The Starry Night." Neat, but personally, I'd be a lot more interested in paying a subscription to a service that just puts the actual paintings on my E Ink screen. Finally, the Acemate Tennis Robot. It's like a standard tennis ball-firing robot with a net for you to aim at, except it can roll around the court to catch your balls and simulate another player returning them by firing another ball at you. The company says this machine "uses dual 4K binocular cameras and advanced AI algorithms to track serves, returns, and rallies with centimeter-level accuracy." It can predict where your ball is going and drive to it at up to 5 meters per second, responding within 0.15 seconds. The demo space the company set up for this was... less than ideal. It was cramped and flanked by loose netting that kept catching on the Acemate's wheels. But even in such an awkward environment, it did a surprisingly good job swinging around the court to try to catch the balls (sometimes even successfully!) that were batted at it by a human tennis demonstrator at the other end. When each ball reached it, another ball would fly out of the bottom almost immediately. It was convincing, and I could definitely see using this thing to practice if you have no friends to play with. SwitchBot says the Acemate serves (pun not intended) as an AI tennis coach, capturing info about ball speed, spin, net clearance, and placement, then gives you feedback using the Acemate app for iOS and Android phones. The company even integrates the Apple Watch to compare biometrics data to statistics from matches played with the robot. The Acemate can run for up to three hours at a time and holds 80 tennis balls. You can tweak how it plays, from setting up to 20 target zones to adjusting its spin and speed to suit your ability. SwitchBot did not reveal pricing or availability for any of the products. I've asked the company, and we'll update when we know more.

SwitchBot Made a Cloud-Less Smart Home Hub With Event Detection

SwitchBot just announced the new AI Hub at IFA 2025. This is a smart home hub that can visually interpret events to create automated triggers, all with local AI-powered hardware with no cloud required. The main draw of the hub is its Vision Language Model (VLM) AI, which is a big name for a pretty simple concept. It basically lets the hub "see" and "understand" events just like a person would. By pairing it with a SwitchBot Pan/Tilt Cam Plus 2K/3K or the Smart Video Doorbell, the AI Hub can interpret what's happening in a scene and then turn that into a text summary. You can then use these text summaries as triggers for your smart home routines. For example, instead of a simple motion alert, the hub can understand an event like, "Show me when I put down my phone," and then you can set up an automation based on that specific event. That is a lifesaver for anyone who sets their phone down without making sure to make a mental note of it. One of the best things about this new hub is how it simplifies complex home automation. We've all been there, trying to set up a complicated routine with a ton of different conditions. The SwitchBot AI Hub basically takes all that headache away. It lets you create complex automations with simple commands, which is a huge improvement over the more clunky systems many of us are used to. The hub also stores all the video footage locally on its built-in 32GB of storage, which you can expand up to 1TB. This means you can keep all your video clips and event summaries on your own device, keeping your privacy and avoiding any subscription fees. The SwitchBot AI Hub isn't just about cameras. It also connects to over 100 devices and supports Matter Over Bridge, dual-band Wi-Fi, and extended Bluetooth, so it's a pretty versatile hub. It's powered by a 6T AI chip, which allows for all the local recognition and can even manage up to eight 2K cameras at once. You can also stream video via RTSP and even output to a monitor, which is pretty handy. The fact that it does all this without needing a constant cloud connection is a huge plus. This is a different approach from many competitors who lock these kinds of features behind a paywall or force you to use a cloud. The AI Hub isn't the only thing SwitchBot announced at IFA 2025. They also revealed a few other cool devices, like the SwitchBot AI Pet and the AI Art Frame. The AI Pet is a soft-bodied companion robot that's designed to bring a little emotional connection into the smart home. It's meant to recognize emotions and respond in real-time, which is a pretty neat idea. The AI Art Frame uses E Ink Spectra 6 color e-paper to display art and AI-generated images, which looks just like real paper and doesn't have the same blue light strain as a regular screen. You can learn more about the SwitchBot Hub AI as well as the other products from SwitchBot on the official website. We'll likely hear about a release date or pricing as time goes on, so if you're interested, it shouldn't be long. Source: SwitchBot