Philips Hue Adds Natural-Language Automation Builder and Sonos Control to Smart Lighting Platform
Philips Hue has announced Custom AI Behaviors, a feature that lets users describe automations in plain language through the Hue app, which then translates those descriptions into multi-step lighting and sensor routines that were not previously possible in the app. The company revealed the feature at a press event at the IFA tech show. The Verge
Custom AI Behaviors was in beta at the time of the announcement and is scheduled to roll out the following month. It can also configure Hue's physical switches — for example, programming a dimmer switch button to disable a motion sensor — which means automations can span both lighting and sensor behavior rather than just bulb states.
The system splits its processing across two tiers. The automation engine and the resulting automations run locally on the Hue Bridge Pro, the company's higher-end hub device, while the AI assistant that interprets natural-language input runs in the cloud. The feature requires the Bridge Pro specifically and will not work on other Hue bridges. Hue built the assistant on the GLM family of open-weight models — meaning the model's code is publicly available and can be self-hosted, unlike proprietary models whose internals are controlled entirely by their creators.
George Yianni, Hue's head of technology, said the Hue app's automation limits were mostly due to the complexity of building a user interface that could present more advanced automations, not limitations in the underlying technology. Natural-language input effectively sidesteps that problem: instead of navigating menus, you describe what you want and the system builds it. Yianni also said the company chose open-source models because closed-source models can change in the background and significantly alter behavior, while open-source ones give Hue control over what runs. The Verge
Philips Hue also announced a new Sonos integration at the same event. Users will be able to control Sonos speakers with select Hue switches, including the Hue Tap Dial Switch, to trigger Favorites, play or pause audio, adjust volume, and move between songs in a playlist. The Sonos integration will arrive via a software update in November.
Signify, the parent company of Philips Hue, has been steadily deepening Hue's AI capabilities since January 2025, when it unveiled an AI-powered assistant in the Hue app that could create automations on demand from natural-language descriptions. By January 2026, that assistant had been updated and could create automations based on user requests, and the company introduced the Hue SpatialAware scenes feature that understands the user's physical space. Signify, Jan 2026 Custom AI Behaviors is the next step in that trajectory, moving from generating individual automations to composing more complex, multi-device behaviors.
Two additional disclosures round out the announcement. The automation engine powering Custom AI Behaviors will be made available to third-party developers, which could extend the system's reach beyond Hue's own app and hardware ecosystem. And Hue teased a Back-up & Restore feature launching early next year that will let users back up their bridge settings to the Hue cloud.
The local-cloud split is worth noting. Running the automation engine on the Bridge Pro keeps execution and device control on-premises, which matters for latency-sensitive triggers and for users wary of cloud dependencies for core home automation. The natural-language interpretation sits in the cloud, where the GLM model runs, but the resulting automations execute locally. That division mirrors a pattern seen across the smart home and IoT landscape: push intelligence to the edge for execution, keep heavy compute in the cloud for generation.
Signify's broader ecosystem strategy also provides context. In June 2026, the company announced enhanced Philips Hue Matter support through a collaboration with Silicon Labs, with new Hue smart bulbs leveraging Silicon Labs wireless technology to support both Matter and Zigbee. Matter is a cross-brand smart home standard designed to let devices from different manufacturers work together. PR Newswire Opening the Custom AI Behaviors automation engine to third-party developers, combined with Matter support, positions Hue less as a closed lighting system and more as a general-purpose automation platform anchored by its hardware.
The broader signal here is Yianni's explanation for the open-source model choice. The concern he describes — that a closed-source model can silently change behavior and break downstream automations — is a real operational risk for anyone building consumer products on large language model APIs. Choosing an open-weight model lets Hue pin a specific version and control updates on its own schedule. For a product category where a broken automation might mean lights turning on at 3 a.m. or a security sensor silently disabling, that predictability matters.
The Sonos integration, while narrower in scope, extends Hue's physical switches beyond lighting control into audio. That positions the Tap Dial Switch and similar hardware as general-purpose input devices rather than dedicated lighting controllers, which is a modest but meaningful expansion of what the hardware does for users who already have it on their walls.
For developers, the third-party automation engine availability is the item to watch. If Hue opens that engine with a reasonable API surface — the set of programming interfaces that let external software talk to the system — it could become a foundation for automation builders who want natural-language-to-automation capabilities without standing up their own AI infrastructure. The specifics of that program, including timing and licensing terms, have not yet been detailed.
