Wink Smart Home Service Goes Dark
On July 1, Wink users reported their smart lights, sensors, and other devices were not working. The company, which is owned by artist Will-i-am, emailed users 10 days after the outage to report that all of their systems (including the company’s website and internal email) were affected but that they hoped to be “fully online soon”. A status page shows Wink’s email support and website have since come back online, but subscribers, who pay $5 monthly for their service, say their devices are not yet working.
The NPD Take:
- Wink entered the home automation market in 2014 with an innovative approach; the ability to connect with devices from a variety of platforms including Zigbee, Z-Wave, Lutron Clear Connect, and others. This likely attracted users to the platform who were looking for flexibility in the brands of devices going into their homes.
- As monthly subscribers, Wink users paid for their devices to connect (unlike other smart home platforms which have recently gone dark) and the company had recurring revenue to operate on- not just the initial hardware sale.
- As smart home technology continues to grow in consumer households and larger platforms take market share from smaller companies, we could see more brands cease operations or integrate with larger platforms.
Alexa Can Now Mimic Voices of the Dead
At last month’s re:MARS conference, Amazon announced a feature it is working on which would allow the application to take a short snippet of a person’s voice and reprogram it into longer speech, customizing both the words spoken and the voice of the speaker. Amazon’s Head Scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, showed off a demonstration where the voice of a deceased family member could be recorded, processed and then read a bedtime story to a loved one.
The NPD Take:
- Video and audio ‘deepfakes’ are becoming more common online, but are nonetheless an impressive showcase of an AI application’s technology. While kids may not elect to have a story read to them by a deceased relative, the technology could be useful in other ways, such as helping those who have lost their ability to speak or to help people (with dementia for instance) remember their own voices or the voices of others.