Amazon-owned Ring is taking another step into the AI era. The company announced a new feature on Wednesday that brings real-time, AI-generated text descriptions to its video doorbells and security cameras.
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Instead of vague alerts like “motion detected,” users will now receive highly specific notifications such as:
“A person is walking up the steps with a black dog,” or “Two individuals are looking into a white car parked in the driveway.”
This feature marks a significant upgrade in how Ring users monitor activity around their homes, offering clearer context that can help determine whether a situation requires immediate attention.
The AI-powered descriptions will only summarize the first few seconds of each motion-triggered video clip and are being rolled out starting today in beta, exclusively for Ring Home Premium subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. Users who prefer the traditional alerts can opt out of the feature through their Ring app settings.
According to Jamie Siminoff, Ring’s founder and now Amazon’s VP of home security, the company is just getting started. In a blog post, Siminoff teased several future enhancements, including:
- Smart motion aggregation: Combining multiple motion events from different cameras into a single, unified alert.
- Custom anomaly detection: Allowing users to define what counts as “unusual,” so the system can flag deviations from that norm.
- Routine learning: Enabling Ring to learn daily patterns and proactively alert users when something seems out of the ordinary.
While these features may improve convenience and efficiency, they also raise new questions around data collection and privacy, something Ring has faced scrutiny over in the past.
The announcement follows the recent introduction of Ring’s AI-powered search tool, which lets users search for specific actions or events across their video history.
“We are just starting to scratch the surface of AI,” Siminoff wrote. “I feel like we are back to the very early days of Ring again. I see unlimited potential for new experiences we can invent for our neighbors.”
Whether those “new experiences” delight or disturb will likely depend on how Ring balances innovation with transparency.