Your Ring Video Doorbell Just Got Smarter With An AI Boost

Forbes

15 hours ago

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After dipping its toes into AI with the launch of its Smart Video Search last year, Ring is diving deeper into generative AI, with a new feature called Video Descriptions, which has just started to roll out.
The idea is that, instead of cryptic motion alerts like 'Person detected,' Ring cams and doorbells can now tell you exactly what's going on. So you'll get alerts like: 'A person with a bike has been seen,' or 'A man with tools is in the kitchen.'
The new feature began rolling out earlier this week in beta for Ring Home Premium subscribers in the US and Canada, and it works across all current Ring doorbells and cameras.
It's powered by generative AI, so it's not the object/person detection that's already been around for years. It's part of a broader plan to shift more of the day-to-day monitoring from humans to machine smarts.
The result should be more helpful alerts, and fewer wasted taps. If your phone buzzes and the notification reads 'Someone is looking into a black car in the driveway,' you're probably going to check that. If it says, 'a person is walking up the steps with a black dog,' maybe not. Especially if it's your neighbor Steve. With his dog. Again.
Ring's latest AI feature provides detailed text alerts
These descriptions are designed to be short and focused, no essay-length breakdowns of what's happening in the frame.
According to Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who recently rejoined the team at the Amazon-owned brand, the AI will only describe the main subject that triggered the motion, and what they're doing.
Siminoff wrote, on a blog post, that Ring is also working on anomaly alerts that learn what's normal for your home and only ping you when something feels off, like someone lurking in the garden at 3am, or your dog suddenly going rogue on the living room decor.
There's also mention of combining multiple motion events into a single alert, which could finally reduce those alert avalanches when someone walks around the side of your house and sets off every camera in sequence.
Ring isn't the only one leaning on AI to cut through notification noise when it comes to security cam alerts; Arlo has its own take, dubbed Event Captions and Wyze launched Descriptive Alerts earlier this year. Eufy and Swann also have AI features as part of their smart security camera arsenal now too.
There's no facial recognition as of yet for Ring's latest AI assault, so the descriptions won't be too personal for now, but it's not hard to imagine a future whereby this sort of tech teams up with Alexa+ to offer advanced AI routines such as locking a door if a stranger approaches or turning on the garage light if it sees your kid arriving home on their bike.
As mentioned, you'll need the $19.99/month Ring Home Premium plan to try it out - you just need to enable it in the Ring app.
We're told that more features will be added in the coming months but remember, this is still in beta, so there may be some teething issues.