Tuya's Hey Tuya Voice Assistant Now Sends Emails

The IoT platform provider Tuya Smart announced a significant upgrade to its Hey Tuya voice assistant at the 2026 Global Developer Summit on April 24, 2026. The update transforms the assistant from a basic conversational tool into an action-oriented system capable of sending emails, scheduling meetings, and processing documents through voice commands alone.

This represents a meaningful shift in how smart home assistants handle productivity tasks. Previously, users would need to open an app, navigate menus, type or dictate content, then confirm sending. Now they can simply say "send an email to my boss about the project deadline" and the system handles the rest (which actually saves time, though the accuracy of what gets sent remains to be seen).

According to the official announcement from Tuya, the upgraded Hey Tuya now fully integrates with third-party services including Google Mail, Calendar, and Docs. The company describes this as evolving from reactive execution to proactive assistance, where the AI interprets user intent and completes multi-step tasks accordingly.

The hardware ecosystem expansion is equally notable. Hey Tuya now supports Matter and mainstream open-source platforms like Home Assistant. For developers and power users, this matters because it means the assistant can work across different smart home standards without being locked into a single vendor's walled garden. The physical experience changes too—fewer app switches, fewer compatibility headaches when adding new devices.

Tuya also unveiled a suite of self-developed AI-native technologies designed specifically for hardware deployment. The Personal Voice Activity Detection (PVAD) model stands out here. Unlike generic voice detection, PVAD automatically identifies and focuses on the intended speaker without requiring prior enrollment. This reduces false activations in complex acoustic environments—think of a kitchen with a running dishwasher, a TV in the background, and multiple people talking.

The infrastructure updates include Physical AI Foundation V2.8, Wukong AI 3.0, Tuya Real-Time Communication (T-RTC) network, Physical Action Model (PAM), and OmniMem V2.0—a long-term memory system. Together these form what Tuya calls a comprehensive toolkit for developers building next-generation AI applications. The OmniMem system is particularly interesting for persistent user preferences and habits across sessions.

PRNewswire coverage of the announcement confirms the three core AI application ecosystems Tuya is prioritizing: AI Home, AI Robot, and AI Energy. This strategic focus suggests the company is positioning itself beyond simple device connectivity into broader lifestyle and infrastructure management. The stock ticker NYSE: TUYA and HKEX: 2391 indicate dual primary listings in New York and Hong Kong.

Vibe Coding represents another significant development tool. Through natural language interaction exclusively, developers can create complex scenarios, personalized device control dashboards, lightweight lifestyle applications, and AI-driven automation workflows. This lowers the barrier to AI application development considerably. Instead of writing code, developers describe what they want and the system builds it.

Scenario-based intelligence now covers use cases including "Morning Wake-up," "Health Management," and "Away from Home Protection." Each scenario dynamically generates based on user habits, preferences, and real-time conditions. The expanded skill library supports slide generation, image recognition, image creation, and video generation—functions that better meet scenario-based needs rather than isolated commands.

The company's history provides context for this push. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Hangzhou, China, Tuya provides a cloud development and management platform to developers, brands, and OEMs for programming, managing, and monetizing smart home and IoT devices. It went public on the NYSE in March 2021, raising $915 million, and launched a Hong Kong Stock Exchange offering in July 2022.

Security concerns have accompanied Tuya's growth. In 2021, cybersecurity firm Dark Cubed reported that Tuya's network-connected devices were subject to China's Data Security Law and described them as insecure with data routing to China. The company has since participated in cybersecurity forums including the China-Europe Cyber Norms Forum in March 2024, though these concerns remain relevant for enterprise and privacy-conscious consumers.

Market reaction to Tuya's AI announcements has been mixed historically. AI-tagged news has produced an average move of about 0.61%, with flat or negative next-day moves following several positive ecosystem updates. Only occasional strong upside responses have occurred, such as the 7.27% gain following the Aura AI pet companion robot launch in January 2026.

The physical reality of using Hey Tuya's new capabilities involves speaking naturally as you would to a friend, then waiting for the system to interpret intent and complete tasks. There's still the friction of authentication for sensitive actions like sending emails, and the question of whether the AI gets the context right when composing messages on your behalf. The technology works, but the trust factor remains.

Whether users actually adopt voice-based email sending at scale remains the real question. Most productivity tasks still require precision that voice interfaces struggle with, especially for professional communication where tone and accuracy matter. The convenience is real, but the risk of miscommunication is also real.

Tuya's broader strategy appears to be building an AI-native infrastructure layer that sits beneath individual smart home products. By offering developers tools like Vibe Coding and the expanded AI toolkit, the company hopes to become the operating system for AI-powered hardware across homes, robots, and energy systems. Whether that vision materializes depends on developer adoption and whether consumers trust these systems with sensitive tasks.

Artūras Malašauskas is an AI Systems Integrator with 20+ years of production-grade web engineering experience. He has designed, shipped, and scaled enterprise Python/PHP systems for logistics, SaaS, and public-sector clients. For the past year, he has focused exclusively on AI integrations: deploying open-source LLMs, building generative media pipelines (image, audio, video), and engineering multi-agent workflows for real production environments. His standard: reproducibility, security, cost-efficient inference—no vaporware. He documents and evaluates emerging AI tooling, separating verified capabilities from marketing noise. Technical editor at: muza-ai.eu, ai-verslas.lt, ai-naujinos.lt Connect on LinkedIn