Flic Cue Adds Voice & AI Agents To Smart Buttons

Smart home button specialist Shortcut Labs has added a microphone and AI voice controls to its Flic Duo smart button, creating a new way to interact with connected devices without having to reach for your phone or shout across the room at a smart speaker.

Dubbed Flic Cue, the Stockholm company’s latest product is just about to go live on Kickstarter, taking the design of the existing Flic Duo and adding a push-to-talk microphone, allowing you to hold a button, speak a command or dictate a thought, and release it to send the recording to the Flic Cue app.

The initial focus is on everyday productivity; Cue can turn spoken instructions into shopping list entries, reminders, calendar events and messages, as well as pass requests to personal AI agents.

But there’s hopefully a more interesting application for existing Flic users, especially given the brand’s smart home compatibility prowess.

Home Assistant voice control is part of the package so there should be a way of bringing natural language voice control to the smart home without needing an always-listening smart speaker from the likes of Amazon and Google, in every room.

Flic already supports more than 200 integrations with its existing range of buttons and controls, including the likes of Sonos, Philips Hue and Matter-compatible devices.

I have Flic buttons all over my house and my family uses them for things like triggering lighting scenes, operating music systems and TV configurations. Cue has both buttons and gesture inputs, meaning it should still be able to function as a conventional Flic controller alongside its new voice capabilities.

Shortcut Labs hasn’t yet demonstrated how natural language commands will translate into those existing smart home integrations but the likes of Ugreen, Anker and SwitchBot have demoed local AI machines controlling smart homes in the past few months.

Flic is launching into an ever-growing market as more smart home manufacturers explore wearable and portable AI hardware.