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If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the video every smart home device manufacturer in the world is watching on repeat:
Facebook inventor and CEO Mark Zuckerberg built a voice-activated, artificial intelligence (AI) interface for his home.
His goal was to emulate Jarvis, the fictional do-everything computerized identity developed by Marvel Comics’ Tony Stark, aka Iron Man.
In Zuck’s version, Jarvis isn’t voiced by actor Paul Bettany. Instead, it’s the soothing, mellow voice pattern of none other than Morgan Freeman. (Membership has its privileges.)
What real estate agents should take away from this playful billionaire’s home automation system is that it’s doing a lot of things that are already possible: Lights can be turned on, playlists accessed and room temperatures adjusted.
This translates into the reasonable assumption that, indeed, we’re only at the start of something big.
A smart foundation
Zuckerberg’s personal custom programming ensures his system will run more cohesively via voice and phone apps than anything the Amazon Echo or Google Home has yet to offer.
This is because he’s coding for himself, with only himself to answer to. (For now.)
Google and Amazon are already in the consumer market, so their products need to do merely enough to justify their retail costs.
What’s compelling about Zuckerberg’s Jarvis is that it’s communicating with pre-existing systems.
The Sonos and Spotify music network, Nest camera and Creston lighting systems didn’t come “Jarvis” ready; there aren’t apps through which these standalone products can handshake and begin cooperating.
All told, that’s why Facebook won’t be marketing a home automation tool any time soon. It appears the goal is make it work with what a person already owns.
But the normally reticent Zuckerberg didn’t share the inside of his home, or his family, with hundreds of millions of people simply to gloat. There’s no doubt something afoot.
Up next: Copy cats
Real estate agents not yet educating themselves on home automation technologies should start. Today.
A byproduct of Zuck’s Jarvis unveiling is that it will start to push independent programmers and hackers (the good kind) worldwide to start emulating his effort.
And that’s how these things take off. Hackers are notoriously competitive; the race to connect the home is already red hot; and the founder of Facebook just dropped another ton of coal in the cauldron.
In summary, the biggest name on the internet just showed us what’s up his sleeves, and it involves the very thing real estate agents live, breathe and sell.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
