Amazon’s wholesome pet finding Search Party feature might just be a lot more ambitious than what we first thought.
For those unaware, Amazon’s Ring launched Search Party late in September last year as a means to help families reunite with lost pets. The feature essentially uses AI to scrub home security footage from the massive mesh network of outdoor Ring hardware, including Ring cameras and doorbells, to see if it could find a match for missing dogs. If and when the camera does find a dog that resembles one reported as missing, it alerts the camera’s owner.
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At the time, the feature was limited to users with Ring hardware. Fast-forward to early February, and Amazon expanded a part of the feature to all in the US. Previously, adding a missing dog alert on the system was reserved for those that had bought into the Ring ecosystem. With February’s update, anyone can start a new Search Party via the Ring app.
Amazon took the development as the perfect excuse for a Super Bowl ad blast, which faced severe criticism and faced backlash “amid fears of mass surveillance.” Now, a lot of that backlash is being validated.
The neighborhood watch endgame
The folks over at 404Media have obtained an internal email sent by Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, telling company employees that using Search Party to find lost pets was merely the first step in a larger play.
“This is by far the most innovation that we have launched in the history of Ring. And it is not only the quantity, but quality,” wrote Siminoff. “I believe that the foundation we created with Search Party, first for finding dogs, will end up becoming one of the most important pieces of tech and innovation to truly unlock the impact of our mission. You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods. So many things to do to get there but for the first time ever we have the chance to fully complete what we started.”
That is concerning, and even more so when you take in the full context. Search Party is part of a broader suite of AI features, including:
- Familiar Faces: Uses facial recognition to identify friends and family members.
- Fire Watch: Uses AI to detect and alert users about nearby smoke or flames.
- Community Requests: A feature that allows police to ask Ring camera owners for footage about a specific incident.
The range, when used together, can cause concerns. Today, the AI is looking for a lost Golden Retriever. Tomorrow, it’s potentially tracking humans. This isn’t to say that the use case Ring might be looking to achieve isn’t novel. Zero-ing out crime in neighborhoods is a noble goal, but getting there with severe surveillance means living in a neighborhood that never stops watching.
