Ring abandons Flock deal after Super Bowl ad ignites mass surveillance fears

After "creepy" Super Bowl ad sparks outrage, Ring abandons Flock deal

Amazon and Flock Safety have ended a partnership that would've given law enforcement access to a vast web of Ring cameras. The decision came after Amazon faced substantial backlash for airing a Super Bowl ad that was meant to be warm and fuzzy, but instead came across as disturbing and dystopian. The ad begins with a young girl surprised to receive a puppy as a gift. It then warns that 10 million dogs go missing annually. Showing a series of lost dog posters, the ad introduces a new "Search Party" feature for Ring cameras that promises to revolutionize how neighbors come together to locate missing pets. At that point, the ad takes a "creepy" turn, Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a letter urging changes to enhance privacy at the company. Illustrating how a single Ring post could use AI to instantly activate searchlights across an entire neighborhood, the ad shocked critics like Markey, who warned that the same technology could easily be used to "surveil and identify humans." Markey suggested that in blasting out this one frame of the ad to Super Bowl viewers, Amazon "inadvertently revealed the serious privacy and civil liberties risks attendant to these types of Artificial Intelligence-enabled image recognition technologies." In his letter, Markey also shared new insights from his prior correspondence with Amazon that he said exposed a wide range of privacy concerns. Ring cameras can "collect biometric information on anyone in their video range," he said, "without the individual's consent and often without their knowledge." Among privacy risks, Markey warned that Ring owners can retain swaths of biometric data, including face scans, indefinitely. And anyone wanting face scans removed from Ring cameras has no easy solution and is forced to go door to door to request deletions, Markey said. On social media, other critics decried Amazon's ad as "awfully dystopian," declaring it was "disgusting to use dogs to normalize taking away our freedom to walk around in public spaces." Some feared the technology would be more likely to benefit police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers than families looking for lost dogs. Amazon's partnership with Flock, announced last October as coming soon, only inflamed those fears. So did the company's recent rollout of a feature using facial recognition technology called "Familiar Faces" -- which Markey considers so invasive, he has demanded that the feature be paused. "What this ad doesn't show: Ring also rolled out facial recognition for humans," Markey posted on X. "I wrote to them months ago about this. Their answer? They won't ask for your consent. This definitely isn't about dogs -- it's about mass surveillance." Amazon's ad ended with Harry Nilsson wailing "Without You," as the young girl reunites with her lost dog. A final message confirms that Ring's Search Party helps locate "more than a dog a day," and Amazon clearly hoped this emotional use case would help increase sales. Instead, the ad created a PR disaster. Protesting the Flock partnership and railing against the ad, Ring customers posted videos where they destroyed Ring cameras or vowed to never purchase them. Others posted on Reddit, sharing tips on how to get refunds for Ring cameras. Ring spokesperson Yassi Yarger told The Verge that Amazon is not exploring any other similar integrations in the aftermath of the deal ending. But while Ring may have hurt its brand, WebProNews, which reports on business strategy in the tech industry, suggested that "the fallout may prove more consequential for Flock Safety than for Ring." For Flock, the Ring partnership represented a meaningful expansion of their business and "data collection capabilities," WebProNews reported. And because this all happened around one of the most-watched TV events of the year, other tech companies may be more hesitant to partner with Flock after Amazon dropped the integration and privacy advocates witnessed the seeming power of their collective outrage. Ring's statement rings hollow, critics say After the backlash, Ring and Flock issued statements confirming the partnership would not proceed as planned. Both statements verified that the integration never launched and that no Ring customers' videos were ever sent to Flock. Ring did not credit users' privacy concerns for its change of heart. Instead, they claimed that a joint decision was made "following a comprehensive review" where Ring "determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated." Separately, Flock said that "we believe this decision allows both companies to best serve their respective customers and communities." The only hint that Ring gave users that their concerns had been heard came in the last line of its blog, which said, "We'll continue to carefully evaluate future partnerships to ensure they align with our standards for customer trust, safety, and privacy." Sharing his views on X and Bluesky, John Scott-Railton, a senior cybersecurity researcher at the Citizen Lab, joined critics calling Ring's statement insufficient. He posted an image of the ad frame that Markey found creepy next to a statement from Ring, writing, "On the left? A picture of mass surveillance from #Ring's ad. On the right? A ring [spokesperson] saying that they are not doing mass surveillance. The company cannot have it both ways." Ring's statements so far do not "acknowledge the real issue," Scott-Railton said, which is privacy risks. For Ring, it seemed like a missed opportunity to discuss or introduce privacy features to reassure concerned users, he suggested, noting the backlash showed "Americans want more control of their privacy right now" and "are savvy enough to see through sappy dog pics." "Stop trying to build a surveillance dystopia consumers didn't ask for" and "focus on shipping good, private products," Scott-Railton said. He also suggested that lawmakers should take note of the grassroots support that could possibly help pass laws to push back on mass surveillance. That could help block not just a potential future partnership with Flock, but possibly also stop Ring from becoming the next Flock. "Ring communications not acknowledging the lesson they just got publicly taught is a bad sign that they hope this goes away," Scott-Railton said.

Amazon's Ring cancels Flock deal as Super Bowl ad bites back

Amazon $AMZN subsidiary Ring spent Super Bowl money to sell reassurance. A lost dog, a worried family, a neighborhood of helpers -- the kind of civic-group-chat fantasy America still likes to imagine it is. A story to melt even the hardest heart. The internet watched the same 30-second footage and saw a different genre: a consumer camera grid learning how to hunt. The ad -- "Be a Hero in Your Neighborhood" -- was built around Ring's "Search Party," a feature that uses AI to scan video from participating outdoor cameras to help locate a missing dog. But the ad became a Rorschach test for what people think Ring actually sells: comfort, or control. Ring says the feature is constrained: The system surfaces a potential match, the alert goes to the camera owner, and that person decides whether to share anything. The company says it's about reunions, not investigations. None of that mattered once the commercial did what good Super Bowl commercials do: turn product into spectacle. On Thursday, Ring said it's scrapping its planned integration with Flock Safety, the law-enforcement tech company known for its automated license-plate-reader networks, the kind of "built for public safety" technology that civil-liberties groups treat as a polite phrase for mass collection. The partnership, announced last fall, would have connected Ring's Community Requests feature -- which lets police ask users for footage -- with Flock's systems. In a blog post, Ring said a "comprehensive review" found the integration would require "significantly more time and resources than anticipated." The company stated that the integration never launched, and "no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety." Flock said the same, and both companies insist the cancellation is unrelated to the ad backlash. The timing makes that a hard sell. Ring and Amazon have spent years trying to keep the brand planted in the language of safety and neighborliness, even as the product sits in the middle of a national argument about private surveillance, police access, and what "consent" means when a street corner becomes a camera angle. The backlash was immediate because Ring has spent years accumulating the kind of trust debt that compounds. People already argue about what these devices do to public space, what gets stored, and how quickly "my porch" turns into "our dataset." So when Ring chose the biggest audience of the year to demonstrate AI search across a camera network, it landed as a threat -- even if the company intended it as a civic fairy tale. You can't dramatize "networked search" -- cameras pinging, neighbors mobilizing, the whole block implicitly enlisted -- and then act surprised when viewers focus on the part where a private company is showing off how easily a neighborhood becomes queryable. Critics didn't need to invent a dystopia. Ring put one on TV and added a dog for emotional support. The company accidentally made its technology easier to fear than to love, and then learned how fast "planned" becomes "radioactive." Ring wanted a mass-audience moment of warmth and usefulness. It accidentally delivered a mass-audience reminder of what modern "help" looks like when you strip away the uplifting music: searchable footage, police-state worries, and a trust gap large enough to swallow a Super Bowl budget.

Amazon ends Flock partnership after backlash over Super Bowl ad

Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports. Amazon's Ring unit has ended its deal with security technology company Flock Safety after backlash over a Super Bowl commercial for the retail giant's smart doorbell sparked concerns about unwanted surveillance. The Ring Super Bowl ad portrayed a family's search for their lost dog, with the manufacturer's internet-enabled doorbell coming to the rescue by showing additional smart doorbells around the neighborhood scanning for the pet and using AI to identify the lost animal. The service, called "Search Party," wasn't related to Flock, but Amazon last year said it planned to work with the company to give Ring owners the option of sharing video with law enforcement through Ring's "Community Requests" service. While Search Party was framed in the Super Bowl ad as a helpful option for Ring doorbell owners, the spot sparked concerns from some critics that the tech could be used for nefarious purposes. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on civil liberties related to digital technology, declared that "no one ... will be safer in Ring's surveillance nightmare." "[T]he company previewed future surveillance of our streets: a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track and locate anything -- human, pet, and otherwise," the group said in a Feb. 10 blog post. In a statement on Thursday, Ring said that it opted to end the partnership because integrating Flock's technology "would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated." The statement didn't mention the Super Bowl commercial or cite it as a reason for ending the agreement. Ring founder Jamie Siminoff told CBS News on Thursday that the company protects privacy. "The backlash has been a little bit around this concept of, 'Is this surveillance?'," he said. "It's actually not. It's allowing your camera to be an intelligent assistant for you and then allowing you to be a great neighbor." The focus on Ring comes amid another high-profile use of a smart doorbell, with investigators in recent days saying they had recovered footage from a Google Nest camera outside the Arizona home of Nancy Guthrie -- the missing mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie. Investigators said they were able to extract "residual data" from the Google equipment, raising questions about how it was possible to retain the video. Officials had said the doorbell was disconnected, with no active subscription for storing video. In its Thursday statement, Ring said its Community Requests feature remains "core" to its mission. The service is optional and voluntary, it added. Community Requests was also used during the Brown University shooting in December, when the Providence Police Department used the service to ask for video footage, Ring noted. "Within hours, seven neighbors responded, sharing 168 videos that captured critical moments from the incident," Ring said. "One video identified a new key witness, helping lead police to identify the suspect's vehicle and solve the case."

Ring ends partnership with surveillance firm after Super Bowl ad backlash

Amazon's doorbell product Ring announced Thursday it is ending its partnership with a surveillance firm after a controversial Super Bowl ad sparked privacy concerns. The Ring ad featured the company's Search Party feature, an AI tool that allows users to receive feeds from other cameras related to certain visual cues. The ad depicted the search for a lost dog, but viewers quickly raised alarms about the possibility of this tool being used to track humans. Flock Safety, the surveillance firm, is not connected with the Search Party tool and the company's Thursday termination announcement makes no mention of the ad. In a statement released on Thursday, Ring said the two companies made a "joint decision" to cancel their planned collaboration, citing financial and time concerns. The company noted that customers' doorbell videos were never shared with the firm. "At Ring, our mission has always been to make neighborhoods safer," the company wrote. "That mission comes with significant responsibility -- to our customers, to the communities we serve, and to the trust you place in our products and features." Flock Safety offers several features on their website, including license plate readers, audio detectors and shared neighborhood camera surveillance programs. The firm partners with several companies, including Amazon Web Services and private security body camera company, Halos. Ring and Flock Safety announced their intention to collaborate on Ring's Community Requests feature last year. The new project would have provided customers with the option to share doorbell footage in response to requests from law enforcement. Police have increasingly relied on doorbell footage to solve crimes, and the company noted that Ring videos provided by neighbors were instrumental in identifying a suspect in the shooting at Brown University last fall. Most recently, the FBI released video footage taken from a Nest doorbell camera as part of the agency's efforts to track down the culprit behind the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie. However, some critics have expressed concerns that this function could be used for federal surveillance to identify people during immigration enforcement operations. Ring stressed that Community Request is "voluntary" and that customers are not forced to share their doorbell footage with others, including with law enforcement. While the company has ended its partnership with Flock Safety, it said that this tool is still "a core feature" of its product. "The feature empowers Ring camera owners to choose to share specific videos with local police in response to requests for help with active investigations - or ignore the request altogether," the company wrote. "Participation is always voluntary. You have complete control over whether to respond to a Community Request and what you share. Every Community Request is publicly posted and searchable for complete transparency and auditability." Ring also expressed its commitment to protecting customers' rights to privacy. "We'll continue to carefully evaluate future partnerships to ensure they align with our standards for customer trust, safety, and privacy," the company wrote.

Amazon Scraps Partnership With Surveillance Company After Super Bowl Ad Backlash

Amazon's smart doorbell maker Ring has terminated a partnership with police surveillance tech company Flock Safety. The announcement follows a backlash that erupted after 30-second Ring ad that aired during the Super Bowl featuring a lost dog that is found through a network of cameras, sparking fears of a dystopian surveillance society. But that feature, called Search Party, was not related to Flock. And Ring's announcement doesn't cite the ad as a reason for the "joint decision" for the cancellation. Ring and Flock said last year they were planning on working together to give Ring camera owners the option to share their video footage in response to law enforcement requests made through a Ring feature known as Community Requests. "Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated," Ring's statement said. "The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety." Beyond the Flock partnership, Ring has faced other surveillance concerns. In Super Bowl ad, a lost dog is found with Ring's Search Party feature, which the company says can "reunite lost dogs with their families and track wildfires threatening your community." The clip depicts the dog being tracked by cameras throughout a neighborhood on using artificial intelligence. And viewers took to social media to criticize it for being sinister, leaving many wondering if it would be used to track humans and saying they would turn the feature off. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focus on civil liberties related to digital technology, said this week that Americans should feel unsettled over the potential loss of privacy. "Amazon Ring already integrates biometric identification, like face recognition, into its products via features like "Familiar Faces," which depends on scanning the faces of those in sight of the camera and matching it against a list of pre-saved, pre-approved faces," the Foundation wrote Tuesday. "It doesn't take much to imagine Ring eventually combining these two features: face recognition and neighborhood searches."

Ring Scraps Controversial AI Surveillance Partnership -- But Not the One From the Super Bowl Ad

ESPN Considering Pat McAfee 'Field Pass' Alt Cast for 2027 Super Bowl Ring has canceled a new and controversial AI-driven video-sharing feature before it even got to launch -- no, not that one. On Super Bowl Sunday, Ring unveiled a new feature called "Search Party" that utilizes artificial intelligence and footage from your Ring cameras to find lost dogs in the community. On social media, the TV spot went over like, well, dog shit. But that's not what the video-doorbell company scrapped on Thursday. In October 2025, Ring and security software company Flock Safety announced a partnership they say was to beef up the effectiveness of the video-doorbell company's Community Requests feature. Flock Safety is primarily known for its automatic license plate reader capabilities, which can help local cops track a specific vehicle locally and has been adopted by the feds for nationwide searches. The AI-based law enforcement tool is a bit too big brother-y for some homeowners who just want to know if its an Amazon delivery person at their door or someone soliciting solar. (Amazon owns Ring by the way.) You know who else hates Flock Safety software? The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). The ACLU says Flock Safety's surveillance technology "has been used by ICE" to help carry out what it calls "the Trump Administration's abusive removal program." The organization also says Flock tech was used by a police officer in Texas to "search nationwide for a woman who'd had a self-administered abortion -- illegal in the state." Officially, Ring says it parted ways with Flock Safety after a "comprehensive review" found the planned integration would "require significantly more time and resources than anticipated." It was a "joint decision," per the company line. "We can confirm that Flock's intended integration with Community Requests has been canceled. This integration was never live, and no videos were ever shared between these services," an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter. "Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. We therefore made the joint decision to cancel the integration." Ring further hammered home in a blog post the point that no customer videos were ever shared with Flock Safety. Ring also really wants you to know that you can opt out of its Community Requests feature anytime -- or just simply don't respond to one when such a request arrives. Your Ring videos are not automatically shared with private citizens or law enforcement. "You have complete control over whether to respond to a Community Request and what you share," the blog reads. "Every Community Request is publicly posted and searchable for complete transparency and auditability." What does any of this have to do with the controversial "Search Party" feature? Nothing, and I guess something. As advertised during Super Bowl XL, Search Party is a free feature that uses Ring videos and AI to identify and locate lost dogs. Basically, your pup runs away, you upload a picture of the sheepdog on the lam, and local Ring users are notified by a Community Request via push notification. They can then either allow their cameras to search for the escapee or simply do nothing and no videos get shared -- just like the Flock thing. Search Party, which unlike Flock actually launched, has worked, says the guy who had no takers on Shark Tank (the Ring doorbell was then called "doorbot") but ultimately sold the company to Amazon for like a billion dollars -- literally. "Since launch, more than a dog a day has been reunited with their family," Ring founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff says in the 30-second Super Bowl LX ad. Since the launch of the ad, more than a mocking tweet a minute has bashed the feature, probably. And Amazon, like other advertisers with a 30-second slot during Super Bowl XL, paid between $8 million and $10 million for the privilege. Search Party remains available and Ring has no plans to shutter it, THR is told.