Ring Camera has gotten AI upgrades that can tell me You will show you what's going on at your front door. Video Description is a new feature that generates textual descriptions for ring doorbells and camera motion activity.
Now, instead of an alert that says “Front door: Someone detected,” you get something like “People with the broom and mop gone.” Alternatively, instead of “living room: motion detected,” you might say “dog is tearing a paper towel over the rug.” You can see how this can help. There's probably no need to do anything about the first one, but there's some kind of action for the second one.
These new description alerts will appear in your phone's camera notifications so you can click to see if you need to wait for the video to load.
According to Ring, the video description will be rolled out on June 25th with home premium subscribers in the US and Canada in beta, and will work with all currently available ring doorbells and cameras.
In a blog post, the recent new recruit at Jamie Siminoff, the founder of the ring and an Amazon-owned company, said the feature was designed to provide only the most relevant information. So, rather than a detailed description of the scene, the notification focuses on “describe the main subject that caused the motion alert and the action they are taking.”
Ring is working on developing custom anomaly alerts by combining multiple motion alerts into one
Video descriptions will take part in the Ring Camera Smart Video Search, which was released later last year, and will be able to query cameras about recent events via the app, such as “Did the kids leave their bikes in the driveway?” Both AI-powered tools are available with a Ring Home Premium subscription ($19.99 per month). This also includes Ring's 24/7 recording option.
According to Siminoff, Ring plans to use video descriptions to enhance more aggressive home security features, such as combining multiple motion alerts into one alert, and more ambitiously develop custom anomaly alerts.
This “generates an alert only if something happens with an unusual property,” he said, explaining that the ring can learn the routine of your home and only provide notifications when something normal happens. This means that people with brooms may not get alerts to people leaving the house, but they will be notified that their dog is tearing the living room.
It's not just the rings that use AI to improve camera notifications. Arlo recently started an AI-driven explanation that calls event captions. Wyze has provided them under descriptive alerts from the moniker and recently launched a not-so-nothing filter that filters all alerts except what appears to be more prioritized. Last year, Google announced an AI explanatory feature with Gemini on its Google Nest camera, but it is only available in the public preview program and is still in limited deployments. Like the ring, all businesses must sign up for subscriptions for these features.
One of the major differences between offering rings is that both Google and Arlo provide facial recognition. This makes explanatory alerts more convenient. Getting a notification that “Johnny has opened a car door in his driveway” is more useful than “a person has opened a car door in his driveway.”
The additional context provided by the description can be used with Gen AI services like Alexa Plus to enable other actions in your home
The camera can see a lot you don't need to know, and notification fatigue is true when it comes to alerts. Anything that can streamline them and focus on them is good. AI-powered smart alerts for people, pets, packages and vehicles were the first step, and now more descriptive alerts with more information could make cameras more convenient in smart homes. For example, the additional context provided by the description can be used with Gen-AI services like Alexa Plus to enable other actions at home.
Of course, more information can lead to more privacy concerns. A detailed textual description of the activity makes it easier for people to keep an eye on their property, but also makes it easier to track people in their homes.
Another concern is accuracy. Both the description itself and the custom filtering are both custom filters that we may offer in the future. If the AI decides it's not an abnormality and someone with the MOP doesn't get an alert to someone leaving my house, then I'm very frustrated if it was actually a ridiculous, particularly ferocious robber with a $700 Dyson mop.
