Ring founder unveils new ‘intelligent assistant’ era for home security
▼ Summary
– Jamie Siminoff, Ring’s founder, returned to the company after selling it to Amazon, motivated by AI’s potential and the personal impact of the Palisades fires.
– Ring is pivoting from a video doorbell company to an AI-powered “intelligent assistant” for the home, introducing features like fire alerts, pet finding, and facial recognition.
– New AI features like Fire Watch and Search Party aim to solve real-world problems, such as improving firefighting resource deployment and reuniting lost pets with owners.
– The company’s partnerships with law enforcement and features like “Familiar Faces” have raised privacy concerns, despite Siminoff’s defense that sharing is always optional for customers.
– Ring is expanding its customer base beyond homes into commercial systems, offering products for businesses, campuses, and public spaces.
What brought a founder back to the company he sold to Amazon after burning out? For Jamie Siminoff, the mind behind the video doorbell brand Ring, the catalyst was a powerful combination: the emerging potential of artificial intelligence and a personal tragedy, the Palisades fires that destroyed his garage, the very place where Ring was born. His renewed mission is to transform Ring from a simple doorbell company into a comprehensive, AI-powered intelligent assistant for home security and daily life, a vision taking shape with several new features launched around this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.
Siminoff reframes the concept, suggesting that AI should be seen as “IA,” or an intelligent assistant. The goal is to reduce the cognitive burden on users by making the system smarter through interconnected features. After selling Ring to Amazon in 2018, Siminoff pushed himself relentlessly before eventually stepping away, feeling the company was stable and profitable. However, the rapid evolution of AI technology pulled him back, presenting new possibilities for the platform he built. The devastating fire that damaged his home provided a stark, personal impetus for innovation.
One direct response to that tragedy is the new Fire Watch feature. Developed in partnership with the nonprofit Watch Duty, it allows Ring users to opt-in to share their camera footage during major fire events. AI analyzes this shared video for signs of smoke, fire, or embers, helping the organization create detailed maps to guide firefighting resources more effectively. Another AI-driven tool, Search Party, tackles a different problem: finding lost pets. Using a form of facial recognition for animals, the system matches photos of missing pets with opted-in Ring footage. It’s already reuniting about one family with their dog each day, exceeding initial expectations.
Not all new directions are without debate. The company’s relationships with law enforcement have been a point of contention. While Ring discontinued an earlier program that let police directly request footage from users, it has since formed new partnerships with companies like Flock Safety and Axon, once again creating pathways for law enforcement to request user videos. Siminoff emphasizes user control, stating that any request is anonymized, police do not know who receives an alert or who chooses to share. He cites the Brown University shooting as a case where such tools proved critical, helping authorities locate the suspect quickly.
Another feature drawing scrutiny is “Familiar Faces,” a facial recognition system that learns to identify regular visitors to a home, like family members or delivery personnel, and can personalize alerts. While intended to reduce unnecessary notifications and add convenience, it has raised concerns from privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a U.S. senator, about data collection and storage.
Siminoff defends these developments as building, not eroding, trust. He argues that the very adoption of Ring products depends on this trust, and there is no incentive to violate user privacy. The system is designed to become a personalized fingerprint for each home, requiring less active interaction from the user. This philosophy extends beyond residential use, as Ring expands into commercial security with mounted cameras, sensors, and solar-powered trailers for businesses, construction sites, and events, broadening its reach far beyond the neighborhood doorbell.
(Source: TechCrunch)
