For 5 years now, I've been using Alexa routines to schedule the grow lights for my Spring tomato seedlings. For 5 years, it worked without fail.
In 2026, the year of Alexa+ and AI slop, it is completely broken.
* The grow lights are set up as a plug. I do NOT have them set as an actual light because I want to say "Lights off" and have the basement lights turn off without turning off the grow lights
* Saying "Lights off" in 2026 now causes the grow lights to turn off at the same time. I tried renaming it to "Grow Plug" just so it wouldn't make any inferences about what type of device it was. No luck
* I moved the "Grow Plug" to a new, completely separate Room within Alexa all on its own. My hope was that the basement lights (in their own room) would then be unable to affect the Grow Plug. No luck.
* For a while I thought that the Automatic Grouping setting might be the culprit. Had it disabled for weeks now. No luck.
* From one day to the next, sometimes saying "Lights off" grabs the Grow Plug, some days it doesn't. Seems highly non-deterministic.
This product is circling the drain. I'm literally going to buy an old school mechanical light timer to do this job now because 2026 technology can't accomplish this anymore. 2025 could! But not 2026.