Greenlight has added a voice assistant to its Family Hub digital wall calendar, a feature the company says was missing from the digital calendar market. The assistant sits behind Greenlight's $10-a-month membership, alongside family location sharing. Greenlight began as a banking tool for parents and teens before expanding into chore and money management for kids.
The Family Hub pulls Google Calendar, iCalendar, Outlook Calendar and other digital calendars onto a single home display. It also offers meal planning, chore trackers, to-do lists, a photo screen saver that works as a digital photo frame, and financial management for children. Family location tracking uses the Greenlight app on a family member's phone or a separately purchased GPS tracker for younger children.
Greenlight's assistant is powered by AI. The company says it uses frontier large language models with proprietary safety tools designed with family safety in mind, so the assistant should avoid sensitive or inappropriate topics. It can set a timer and answer day-to-day questions, and a conversation transcript appears on the right-hand side of the display. Sushil Sharma, Greenlight's chief product officer, said voice assistants have existed for more than a decade yet voice support was absent from the digital calendar market, and that the Hub is meant to be an all-in-one command center that limits the number of devices families need. Sharma also noted that not all children can read and type fluently, making voice support more accessible.
In testing, the Hub was somewhat sensitive to its "Hey Greenlight" wake phrase and sometimes activated at random. It also tended to keep listening after a command, occasionally answering questions from nearby conversation. The device has a microphone but no camera, unlike most smart displays.
Most features are available without the premium subscription, including the photo screen saver that Skylight charges for. Greenlight instead charges for the AI assistant, voice interaction and family location sharing. Setting up the Hub through the app initially routed a tester onto the financial pathway; Greenlight says it is fixing that issue in the app.
Amazon and Skylight declined to comment when asked why neither has introduced a similar product. Digital wall calendars have grown in popularity this year, driven by the Skylight Calendar.
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