Comcast Corp. formed a dedicated voice team that will work closely work with the Xfinity Home apps team, Comcast executive Bryan Kissinger said.

In a post made available on gearbrain.com, Comcast said the team created its Voice Action Processing Service, which processes commands that come from the company's homegrown Natural Language Processing agent.

"With that platform in place, we began to expand our connected home voice capabilities," said Comcast. "This included adding direct commands for lights and thermostats using Xfinity Home's ZigBee Radio. When we made that update, customers could say 'Xfinity Home, all lights off' or 'Xfinity Home, set the bedroom thermostat to 72 degrees.'"

Comcast said it is working with its Applied Artificial Intelligence team to develop the capacity for more natural commands.