Amazon's Ring can now use AI to 'learn the routines of your residence'
- Reference: 1750878126
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/25/amazons_ring_ai_video_description/
- Source link:
It's part of Amazon's — really, all of the tech giants are doing this — ongoing effort to stuff AI into everything it makes. This particular feature will use generative AI to write text descriptions of the motion activity detected by Ring doorbells and cameras.
As of today, [1]Video Descriptions is available as a beta feature in all Ring doorbells and cameras, but only to Ring Home Premium subscribers in the US and Canada, and only in English. Users must enable the video-to-text capabilities through the Ring app.
[2]
Once they do this, as Ring founder and Amazon VP of product Jamie Siminoff [3]wrote in a blog today announcing Video Descriptions:
Ring notifications will provide more meaningful information like, 'A person is walking up the steps with a black dog,' or 'Two people are peering into a white car in the driveway.'
The aim, according to Siminoff, is to shift more of the heavy lifting involved with home security to Ring's AI. This will also include "custom anomaly alerts," which are generated when "something happens on your property that is an anomaly to your property."
And here's where it gets a little bit creepy: "It will learn the routines of your residence, get smarter, and deliver peace of mind by only notifying you when it is something out of the ordinary."
[4]Ring dinged for $5.6M after, among other claims, rogue insider spied on 'pretty girls'
[5]Amazon sued for allegedly slurping sensitive data via advertising SDK
[6]No way? Big Tech's 'lucrative surveillance' of everyone is terrible for privacy, freedom
[7]Anthropic: All the major AI models will blackmail us if pushed hard enough
This gives us pause, as opposed to peace of mind, and sounds like super-charged snooping wrapped in an AI bow. If this kind of information is not properly secured, it could be a treasure trove for thieves, burglars, stalkers, and all other sorts of mischief-makers. In December 2022, a [8]grand jury indictment charged two US men with breaking into Ring accounts to make fake emergency calls to police ("swatting"), then streaming the audio and video as the police arrived.
It's especially troubling considering Ring's past troubles with [9]data privacy and security and its [10]cozy relationship with law enforcement.
[11]
[12]
In April 2024, US regulators ordered Ring to pay out refunds totaling $5.6 million to customers to resolve allegations that cybercriminals and rogue Ring workers alike [13]spied on folks via their home security cameras .
The Register asked Ring where this information about users' home routines is stored, how it's secured, and under what circumstances it might be shared with law enforcement.
[14]
"We do not log the descriptions generated from Video Descriptions," a spokesperson emailed in response to our questions.
In the meantime, your humble vulture will continue to stick with dumb doorbells and barky dogs to deliver peace of mind about out-of-the-ordinary occurrences at home. ®
Editor's note: This story was amended post-publication with comment from Amazon.
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://ring.com/plans#video-descriptions
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aFxxdGxZhRsPvfm7FMhWigAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/ring-video-descriptions-gen-ai
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/25/ring_ftc_settlement/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/30/amazon_sued_for_snarfing_sensitive/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/19/social_media_data_harvesting_handling_ftc/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/25/anthropic_ai_blackmail_study/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/20/ring_swatting_suspects_charged/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/01/ftc_alexa_ring_amazon_settlement/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/08/police_ring_privacy/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aFxxdGxZhRsPvfm7FMhWigAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aFxxdGxZhRsPvfm7FMhWigAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/25/ring_ftc_settlement/
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aFxxdGxZhRsPvfm7FMhWigAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"Two people are peering into a white car in the driveway."
"Two dogs are farking on your front lawn."
"The Amazon delivery guy is throwing your package into the bushes."
"Your neighbour from across the street is stealing your newspaper."
Re: "Two people are peering into a white car in the driveway."
The Amazon delivery guy is throwing your package into the bushes
Probably not an anomaly.
Re: "Two people are peering into a white car in the driveway."
I wonder how robust it is to spoofing - perhaps you might hold a picture of (eg) some suitable internet meme up to your ring and then get a matching notification... :-)
I actually like the idea, at least the part about only notifying you if something *actually* happens. I don't own the devices in my house but I do have access to them, and I completely turned off Ring notifications because I became completely fed up with it constantly annoying me about family members routinely going in and out of doors, it ended up simply not being worth the trouble for that 1% of the time when a visitor actually came up to the door. As the product stands now, it's a primitive gimmick of a toy, it *needs* some kind of intelligence to it. I'm not joking, I have a pet Sun Conure that "barks" when someone arrives, and it's infinitely more informative and intelligent than the stupid camera that has to notify me when a breeze occurs. If I owned our Ring cameras I probably would have just thrown them out by now in favor of my current Flintstones solution, and I am by no means some kind of luddite.
Pay us to spy on you all the time and sell your data!
Jeff Bezos is watching you
I immediately get images from '1984', the nightmares from the book (that was more horrifying than the movies).
An important role in the book is played by home screens, camera's and microphones that listen and watch in. It wasn't called Ring, but for the rest, it was Rings inside and out.
Amazon has a deep [1]spiritual link with that book 1984 .
[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/519855/amazon_kindle_1984_lawsuit.html
So glad I don’t have Premium service…
…. whatever that is.
So it's official.
Amazon is the new Stazi.
Lovely.
Re: So it's official.
No, no, no Amazon aren't the Stasi, they're the middleman enabling global surveillance capabilities to the Stasi while providing plausible deniability. There's a world of difference!
AWS Police
A little bit of lobbying and Police will be buying packaged household habit data.
Then it will be compulsory to have Ring camera.
At my street 90% of homes have doorbell camera and about 70% is Ring.
Police is not doing their job and so people flock to these services to have some sense of security.
If only these big corporations paid taxes to fund the proper policing.
But as always, there is always going to be a brown envelope in the way of doing something about it.
Next years price hike
Just what %age it will go up by now.