AI Revolutionizes Home Security: Advanced Features and Privacy Concerns

4 futuristic AI features now common in home security devices

Artificial intelligence can make smart homes smarter, help us manage our days, and even help us plan major life changes. This series looks at the new - and sometimes surprising - ways AI is being used to enhance our lives. Over the past decade or so, as AI has become more common in the background, it got a lot more common for consumers with smart homes to build smart security systems on their own - rather than having to pay high fees to established old-school security companies. Given the fact that home security has become so much more democratized, you can bet that AI features are coming to those systems too. In fact, there are plenty of AI-based features that have already started rolling out to home security devices, ensuring that home security systems are more advanced and more helpful than ever. Here's a look at some of the most common of those features - and how you can take advantage of them. Object recognition is getting a whole lot more advanced. Over the past few years, security companies have been building better facial recognition into their cameras, ensuring that you always know who's at the door near your home. Those systems are going beyond that too, able to recognize objects like packages on your doorstep, vehicles parked in your driveway, and even license plates from suspect cars. These features have tangible benefits; not only will you be able to know who's at your home and, but you'll be able to eliminate false alerts due to the movements of trusted individuals, ensuring you only get notifications when the system detects someone it doesn't recognize. No longer are systems constantly sending notifications just because they detect a tree moving in the breeze. Object recognition ensures that they can filter out movement that's irrelevant to home security. The majority of smart security cameras offer object or person recognition of some kind, especially when it comes to common objects like packages and people that a camera sees regularly. Analytics from security cameras can go beyond simply detecting objects and people. Video analytics can allow cameras to better recognize when someone might be behaving suspiciously around your home. For example, cameras could identify that someone is carrying a weapon or something they might use to break into your home, then notify you of that behavior. Generative AI will allow those notifications to be richer and more helpful as well, thanks to the fact that it can help systems create summaries of activity that's detected with specifics about what the cameras saw. Google has started leveraging AI for these analytics and summaries in the Google Home platform, and it's likely that others will follow suit, with Google more widely rolling out the feature to more cameras and systems. Smart home automations can be incredibly powerful as they allow you to set up your home to work without you needing to actually do anything. AI will help make those automations easier to set up and run more efficiently, largely through natural language recognition, which will allow you to set up automations with a simple command. For example, you could tell your smart home system to "always lock the door five minutes after I leave." This could be done without you having to scroll through menus, set up individual devices, and so on. A feature like this is already rolling out as part of Google Home with certain Nest devices. It runs on the Help Me feature in Google Home, which allows you to text describing the automation you want to set up. The feature is expected to widely roll out by the end of 2024. Smart security systems are often controlled with voice commands, allowing you to arm a system or camera using a service like Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. Google has announced that it's supercharging the Google Home platform with AI features based on Gemini, which will allow you to find out information about your smart home using the devices that you already have set up. The example that Google gives is that you'll be able to ask Gemini if the kids left their bike in the driveway, after which Gemini will be able to use a security camera that you might have set up in the driveway to find the answer to your question. This is another feature that Google has shown off and is expected to roll out widely by the end of 2024.

What Is an AI Security Camera?

Expertise Smart home | Smart security | Home tech | Energy savings | A/V AI models are everywhere right now, popularized by LLMs, chatbots and conversational AI that sound more and more realistic every day. From Google Gemini to Apple's less overt Apple Intelligence, we're pushing the boundaries of what these complex algorithms can recognize and manufacture. That technology is hard at work in home security too and nothing shows it better than AI security cameras. While your home camera isn't going to strike up a conversation -- not quite yet -- it can identify and report a variety of objects with the latest built-in intelligence. Here's how it all works. Read more: I Thought I'd Hate AI in Home Security. I Couldn't Have Been More Wrong While AI security cameras won't answer questions like ChatGPT, they use similar complex algorithms for another purpose: To categorize and identify objects. These learning algorithms are trained on many different images so that they can spot common things a security camera might see, like a dog, human or vehicle. When paired with motion detection, this kind of object recognition can send smart alerts letting you know that specific things are happening -- like when a package shows up at your front door or suddenly disappears. Or the cameras can automatically filter out passing vehicles so they aren't triggered by every car driving by. Deeper customization options are often hidden in camera settings, allowing you to arrange for specific types of object recognition or turn off the feature altogether. For example, you could set a camera to only send you alerts when it sees a human figure. But that's only the beginning of what AI cameras are now capable of. In my experience testing dozens of different home security AI, the biggest everyday benefits come down to three important things: Keep in mind, you don't have to use AI features on your home security cams. Most have the ability to turn them off. But object detection is easy to use and has relatively few drawbacks. The biggest downside to this kind of AI is that new users will need to spend time in their camera app settings learning where object detection is, what they want to enable and how it all works. There's a learning curve if you haven't bought one of these cameras before. Some versions of these algorithms also required subscription fees or may raise privacy concerns, issues I'll touch on below. Read more: This Major Blunder Shows Why You Can't Trust ChatGPT with Home Security Questions Some can, and it's becoming more common across brands like SimpliSafe, Google Nest and Arlo. Face recognition allows you to save profiles of family or people who regularly visit your home so that your camera can recognize specific people. These face profiles let you receive even more targeted alerts, and in some cases can automate home security, like unlocking a smart lock when the right familiar face shows up. Tech like ADT's Trusted Neighbor access (which uses Google Nest's familiar face capabilities) can also give faces temporary access, or limit their access to only certain times of day -- like when a dogwalker shows up. SimpliSafe's version, meanwhile, can send alerts if there's an unfamiliar face, so agents only spend time watching strangers. Most camera AI is limited to generic objects, like vehicles, animals, humans and packages. As these algorithms continue to evolve, they are getting additional capabilities. One of the best examples is Arlo's beta program to train cameras to recognize specific objects or states (like if a garage door was left open), so the camera can send an alert if it sees a certain thing or if a particular item disappears. That depends on the security company behind them. Brands such as Eufy, Lorex and Google Nest usually offer basic object recognition for free. Nest's version, which comes with package detection, is particularly accurate. Other brands, like Arlo, Ring and Blink usually require a subscription fee to unlock AI detection and related smart alerts, starting between $3 and $8 a month. When you reach more advanced features like face recognition or customized object detection, a subscription is required as these options are locked behind higher tiers. Generic object recognition offers few privacy issues. However, if you want to share home security videos online or upload them to a platform, the camera brand may receive permission to use your video to help train their AI. Facial recognition features are more complicated. Face data must be shared with security companies when creating face profiles. Companies typically use a "not-quite-end-to-end" encryption system for face profiles, which only decrypts the data when it's needed. If someone else (like a homeowner you're making deliveries to) creates a face profile for you, you don't really have control over what happens to that profile. Privacy concerns like these are also being worked out via law. Visit Illinois, for example, and all these face recognition features are disabled because of the state's current privacy laws. Other cities and states are working on similar legislation. They often are, offering a way to cut down on unnecessary alerts and even false alarms. Security companies are also working on additional AI recognition capabilities with commercial applications. That includes training models to recognize suspicious behaviors, such as movement associated with theft or lurking. They will. It's been a huge year for security camera AI, but the growth of these algorithms continues. One example is Swann Security's conversational AI for video doorbells, which can answer questions about who is living at the residence for the homeowner (as rudely or nicely as you'd like). Expect home security camera AI to offer even more tailored options and start acting increasingly like your personal bouncer or butler in the coming years.