{"slug": "new-sonos-conversational-ai-aims-to-free-users-from-phones", "title": "New Sonos conversational AI aims to free users from phones", "summary": "Sonos CEO Tom Conrad unveiled Sonos 27, repositioning the company's audio platform as an operating system with a larger role for artificial intelligence, aiming to reduce users' reliance on smartphones. The move follows a botched app redesign in May 2024 that halved the share price from US$16.63 to US$8; under Conrad, shares have recovered to US$15.60. Conrad stated the company's core customer metrics are 'the best in a decade'.", "body_md": "# New Sonos conversational AI aims to free users from phones\n\nTom Conrad, chief executive of [Sonos](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/sonos-boss-rennie-addabbo-explains-why-he-is-fighting-to-save-live-music/news-story/5095e9ea181953870870ea2403a611e5), is a man of routine. He wears an [Oura](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/review-of-oura-ring-the-screenless-wearable-that-reveals-the-truth-about-your-health/news-story/cac3d4d25af83303fc7498d74b6afb88) to track his health and logs into Reddit and other social media to track how the audio company he helms is performing with its customers.\n\nHe was appointed CEO in July last year to rebuild trust in the $US1.85bn ($2.58bn) Nasdaq-company following a disastrous app redesign that turned its speakers effectively into paper weights for some users, with the company slashing revenue forecasts and [executive bonuses.](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/sonos-executive-to-forgo-bonuses-after-conceding-missteps-in-bugridden-app/news-story/2893b3273d61a32c4e8c20270d5ae203)\n\nIts share price more than halved from US$16.63 to US$8 following the botched app upgrade, which was released in May 2024. But under Conrad’s leadership, the share price has recovered to US$15.60, and its core customer metrics are “the best in a decade”. But he doesn’t feel comfortable with corporate dashboards.\n\n“There’s a qualitative answer to your question,” Conrad says when asked if the company has been full reset.\n\n“On the qualitative side … part of the reason that I’m so active on social (media) is I find people every week who we can help and connect them with our you know technicians who will help them debug the specifics of whatever problem they might be encountering and get to the bottom of it.\n\n“One way that you can tell that it’s actually me and not you know a team of social media performers pretending to be me is that I do about as much as one busy human being can do, which is to say that you know I respond when I can, and I occasionally let threads run dry when I should have kept responding. Far from perfect at that.”\n\n“In a way, the work is never done.”\n\nAnd now Conrad is making one of the biggest bets in Sonos’s 25-year history.\n\nHe has unveiled Sonos 27, repositioning it as an audio operating system rather than just a Wi-Fi speaker brand. He is also lessening the company’s reliance on controlling its speaker via smart phones – and is candid about his own addiction.\n\n“My predecessor’s goal was to announce two new products every year, and the company got really, really good at that. But kind of along the way, I think the unintended consequence of that is we really began to think of ourselves as a hardware company.\n\n“Almost all of the storytelling we did was about those individual objects. Here is a high end soundbar. Here’s a new miniature subwoofer. Here’s a you know mid-tier portable speaker, and I think we lost track of the fact that really what we sell is not those individual items, but a system – how all of those objects can come together in a home in a really compelling way.\n\n“Part of the magic that takes those individual items and turns them into something greater than the sum of the parts is really the software. That stitches them all together.\n\n**Bigger role for AI**\n\nUnder this plan the speakers have become smarter – for example the portable Play speakers know when they have been moved near a TV and automatically connect to other Sonos speakers in a Sonos home theatre system – and artificial intelligence now plays a bigger role.\n\nWhile most consumer electronic brands are slapping AI onto everything, as part of a fear of missing out frenzy with expected mixed results, Conrad’s says Sonos use of the technology is designed for people to stop reaching for their phone or people arguing with a chatbot as they search for their favourite song.\n\nConrad says the problem with voice activated AI is people have to often remember the song, the artist, the album and the streaming service and say things in the correct order and hope the bot understands what it means.\n\n“What’s lacking in the current voice experiences, honestly, we just hear it over and over: ‘we just want to talk to it, without it having to guess what it wants me to say’ and ‘I want it to work’.\n\n‘We’re delivering on that promise. You can stutter. Maybe you don’t remember the name of the album. You can say play that ‘album, the thing I really liked to listen to when I was in college. They’re British from Bristol, I think, the singer from the Cocteau Twins was on some songs – oh, I know, they did the theme song for that Fox show about a curmudgeonly doctor. What was that called? House or something’.\n\n“You literally say that to our speakers, rambling, and it will go: ‘Oh, you’re talking about Massive Attack, and the song you’re thinking of is called Teardrop. Let’s play that. That’s the difference between: ‘Hey Sonos, play the album, you know, Mezzanine by Massive Attack’. I’m really excited about our customers getting access to this new voice assistant because you’re just going to be able to talk to it and expect it to work, and it does.”\n\nSonos has built its own core AI model to run the new voice assistant. It can interact with other smart home appliances like control lighting or function as an egg timer. Conrad says it also knows when to hand off to a frontier model, such as ChatGPT and Claude, for more complex queries.\n\nBut he said the biggest change was people no longer needed to control speakers using their phones.\n\n“When the iPhone and Android launched, the promise of that device was to deliver all of these profound interactive media and computing experiences away from home. And what’s happened in the nearly 20 years that have passed since their announcement, of course, is that the devices are incredibly engaging and addictive. We spend too much of our time, I think, at home on my phone.\n\n“We talk about our daughter’s use of an iPad and say, ‘boy, we wish, wish she was on the iPad less’. No, no one says ‘let’s have a nice evening at home, all looking at our phones’, and yet we do that a lot, as a culture.\n\n“And so I’m particularly passionate about iterating on the idea in this next chapter for Sonos about how we can deliver our experiences without being so reliant on the phone. You’ll see us make a number of moves through this fashion.”\n\n**New interactive products**\n\nConrad has also released new products including its second generation of Ace headphones. These can finally fully interact with Sonos Wi-Fi speakers, solving one of the biggest criticisms the original headphones attracted when [they were launched in 2024](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/sonos-software-update-plans-to-win-back-customers-and-redefine-longevity/news-story/2b1e8367d7c9e4db95147ddc70896f8f).\n\nHe also unveiled a new Beam Ultra soundbar, which is priced $1099, and has “dedicated up-firing drivers that deliver true 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos” and “warmer bass”.\n\nThe Sonos Ace Ultra headphones are priced at $699 – $100 more than the first generation. They have 40mm drivers, about 1.5 times better active noise cancellation and come in two new colours, agave and sand, as well as Sonos’s traditional white and black. Conrad said it also had what he calls Headphone Engine 2, which allows people to connect to their Sonos system with one press of a button.\n\n“In some ways the most crystallised expression of the cul-de-sac that we found ourselves in at the in 2024, which is that we were making products that were not fully present in the Sonos system, and so from the very start with Ace Ultra, we said this product has to participate in the Sonos system as a you know a full member, and so we designed an entirely new hardware architecture that allows the device to securely connect to the Sonos fabric.”\n\n*This article first appeared in The Australian as **New Sonos AI assistant and Ace Ultra headphones aim to free users from their phones**.*\n\n## Related Topics\n\n### UNLOCK INSIGHTS\n\nDiscover the untold stories of emerging ASX stocks.\n\nDaily news and expert analysis, it's free to subscribe.\n\nBy proceeding, you confirm you understand that we handle personal information in accordance with our\n[Privacy Policy](https://stockhead.com.au/privacy-policy/).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-sonos-conversational-ai-aims-to-free-users-from-phones", "canonical_source": "https://stockhead.com.au/tech/new-sonos-conversational-ai-aims-to-free-users-from-phones/", "published_at": "2026-09-04 02:23:02+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-04 02:53:01.291744+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Sonos", "Tom Conrad", "Oura", "Nasdaq"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-sonos-conversational-ai-aims-to-free-users-from-phones", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-sonos-conversational-ai-aims-to-free-users-from-phones.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-sonos-conversational-ai-aims-to-free-users-from-phones.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-sonos-conversational-ai-aims-to-free-users-from-phones.jsonld"}}