Ring Unveils AI-Powered 'Smart Video Search' for Effortless Video History Navigation

Ring's new tool will make sure you never miss that special moment

Searching through your library of Ring videos for a specific clip can be time-consuming. Ring's new AI-powered search tool promises to make searching faster than ever and finding certain moments easier. Yesterday, Ring announced it is launching what it calls Smart Video Search, which will be compatible with all Ring video doorbells and cameras. The tool is said to be powered by Ring IQ -- its in-house AI -- and Visual Language Modeling (VLM) to match text to images. This capability will allow it to help you find certain videos in your collection more quickly with a simple query. These queries can also be used to help with finding certain moments, like your child riding their bike.

Ring Smart Video Search uses AI to quickly find video clips | Digital Trends

Ring has revealed a new AI-powered feature called Smart Video Search that's currently being tested in public beta. The goal is to make it easier than ever to find specific moments in your video history by allowing you to enter a text description of an event, which will then be used to scour your motion events for a clip that matches your input. Smart Video Search uses a combination of Ring AI and Visual Language Modeling (VLM) to quickly search your video history based on a text description. For example, if you search for "red bicycle in the driveway," your Ring app will automatically pull up any clips that feature -- you guessed it -- a red bike in your driveway. Recommended Videos Ring says the feature can search for anything related to "animals, locations, packages, people, time, vehicles, weather, and even activities like jumping, running, playing, or riding." Essentially, it should be easier than ever to find a specific clip. Gone are the days of scrolling through hundreds of motion events. Instead, you can just type in a description of the event and get a list of matches. That's an impressive feature, and it sounds like Ring is taking its time to make sure it's working properly before rolling it out to the masses. Smart Video Search will first be available to select customers in public beta as of today. On November 5, you'll find Smart Video Search available to Ring Home Premium subscribers for $20 per month. The feature will work across all Ring video doorbells and cameras.

Ring beats Google Nest to the punch with AI-powered natural language search for video

Amazon's Ring has just announced AI-powered search for video events captured by its cameras, beating Google to the punch on the idea. Google, in a preview of what's to come for AI in Nest products, showcased using Gemini to generate natural language descriptions of events captured in a video by a Nest camera. That same Gemini integration would also allow for natural language search of video events. For Nest, that functionality is coming in preview later this year before a broader release in 2025, but its rival in Amazon's Ring has just launched the functionality first. In a post today, Amazon explains that "Smart Video Search" is rolling out in public beta to Ring owners starting today. The feature will later be available to all users as a part of the revamped "Ring Home" subscription service which includes 24/7 recording and other upgrades for $19.99/month. "Smart Video Search" in Ring will allow users to use natural language to search through the video event history captured by their cameras. This can include searches such as "raccoon in the backyard last night," "red bicycle in the driveway," or "why did the trash cans fall over?" Amazon explains:

Ring's new premium AI feature makes video history searchable by keyword

Those raccoons are showing up at the back door way more than I knew. That's my own takeaway after testing the beta of a new AI-powered "Smart Video Search" feature from Ring, which lets users search the video archive from their doorbells and other Ring cameras using keywords. The Amazon-owned company announced the feature Wednesday morning. It will be released initially as a public beta, before it's rolled out as part of a new $19.99/month Ring Home Premium subscription later this year. Ring is betting that people will find it useful to make practical and fun discoveries, such as when a package was delivered, or who took the last cookie from the jar. Smart Video Search uses an AI system called Ring IQ, and a vision language model to match text to images. It's not trained on specific search terms, which means that there's an endless number of queries to try. "It's the next level, the next leap, which takes advantage of a lot of the new AI technology and helps you really cut all the way down to very, very specific things," said Eric Kuhn, the GM in charge of Ring experiences and subscriptions. Examples include animals, packages, people, vehicles, and weather, and activities such as running, riding a bike, or playing. It can find a red car, or a blue truck, for example. In my experience, it's discerning enough to tell the difference between a UPS driver and a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier at the front door. It distinguishes between daytime and nighttime, and different days of the week. When a clip is played, it jumps to the specific moment that matches the query. Ring says there are multiple safeguards incorporated into the feature. Ring CEO Liz Hamren first mentioned plans for the feature in an interview with GeekWire published earlier this year. However, Ring isn't the first to market with this type of feature. Kirkland, Wash.-based Wyze Labs unveiled its own AI video search feature in August for customers on its $9.99/month Cam Unlimited plan. As for those early morning visitors at my house, I found that Smart Video Search was even able to differentiate between raccoons, plural, and raccoon, singular -- calling up videos showing one or multiple animals depending on which term I used. (This required sorting the results by relevance rather than date.) Based on my recent experience finding one of those raccoons in my living room, what I'd really want is real-time AI recognition that could trigger an action, such as locking the cat door or activating a flood light to scare them away. You can imagine all sorts of scenarios where this type of automation would be useful. That's not possible with Ring's app, yet, but AI video search is a notable first step.

Ring adds AI-enabled 'Smart Video Search' as part of its upcoming $20 subscription service

With the new 24-7 recording feature now live, it could save hours of searching. Last week Ring announced a feature that will you to capture video 24/7 so you don't miss anything if a motion alert wasn't triggered. The challenge is that if you'll then need to wade through hours of footage to find an event. Now, the Amazon-owned company has introduced Smart Video Search, an AI feature for subscribers of the upcoming $20 Ring Home serivce that makes it faster and easier to find specific moments in your video history. The system is powered by Ring IQ, a combination of Ring AI technology and in-house expertise. It uses Visual Language Modeling (VLM) to match text to images and show results. That way, you can type specific queries into the Ring app to figure out why your garbage cans were knocked over, rather than scrolling through hours of video footage. For instance, you could search for "raccoon in the backyard last night" to see if it was one of those critters that upended your trash. Ring cites other examples, like typing "red bicycle in the driveway" and seeing footage that shows one of your kids teaching the other how to ride a bike. You could also use the feature to find out who took the last of the ice cream, according to Ring. It might seem a bit icky to spy on your own family that way, but Ring does say that it's a "leader in developing privacy features" and is committed to developing responsible AI. The system also uses a "sophisticated input moderation technique to prevent searching for offensive, inappropriate or harmful content." If you believe Ring's privacy claims (the company has a checkered history in that regard) and trust having more Amazon AI tech in your house, Smart Video Search is rolling out to select customers in public beta starting today. The feature will work on all ring video doorbells and cameras, and will roll out widely with the new $20 Ring Home subscription service on November 5th.

Ring's new Smart Video Search dazzled me with its accuracy - here's when you get to try it

Ring cameras are getting an impressive AI upgrade. Soon these select subscribers will know who knocked over their garbage cans. Amazon is on a roll this month -- with Prime Big Deal Days underway, tablets released last week, and now new search features for its Ring customers. Ring is adding artificial intelligence (AI) to its video history, letting users search for specific situations and surprisingly detailed moments. Also: This is the Ring doorbell most people need, especially at this price The new Smart Video Search will let you search "UPS truck" in your video history on the Ring app and get a list of results with videos of all the UPS trucks captured in the past 30 days, queued up right when the event happened. You can get more specific, too, searching "raccoon at night in the rain" or "squirrel on the roof in the afternoon," and have the Ring app show you exactly what you mean. I was thoroughly impressed by the search accuracy during a demo ZDNET had with Eric Kuhn, GM at Ring Experiences and Subscriptions. I was glad to learn that this feature will launch to all Ring Home Premium subscribers on Nov. 5. Google is launching a similar feature for its Nest Aware subscribers but has announced it would arrive "later this year," so its timeline is unclear. I also attended a demo for the Nest camera feature with AI search, but Google didn't search for such specifics as "a red truck in the rain," which Ring did with great results. "Smart Video Search is one of Ring's most advanced AI features," said Kuhn in the announcement. "It's powered by Ring IQ -- which is a combination of Ring AI technology and in-house expertise -- and uses Visual Language Modeling to match text to images and quickly deliver results. Instead of scrolling through your video footage to figure out who ate the last of the ice cream or why the garbage cans are knocked over, you can type queries directly into your Ring app to quickly pinpoint the right moment." Also: The Ring Spotlight Cam Pro impressed me in the most unexpected way (and it's on sale) I've been granted beta testing access and Smart Video Search has worked well in my experience -- it's certainly convenient when you're looking for the exact moment something happened or need to revisit past events for security reasons. I'll have fun with it during Halloween, searching through different costumes to see how accurate the feature can be. This new Smart Video Search feature is rolling out to select customers in public beta starting today and then to Ring Home Premium subscribers in the US beginning on Nov. 5.

Ring's New AI Search Tool Lets You Easily Scan Videos -- With Mixed Results

The Amazon-owned home-surveillance business will offer users the ability to search footage for specific objects and actions. WIRED gave it a try. Liz Hamren, the CEO of Amazon's Ring camera business, often wonders whether her husband remembered to grab the package of frozen goods that is regularly delivered to their home. She could nag him, or she could check the footage from their Ring. Historically, the latter option required her to tediously swipe through a video timeline in Ring's app to identify if and when the box was picked up and by whom. But in recent weeks, Hamren has been able to let AI do the searching. She types "package today" into the app and right away can see the clip of her husband completing his duty, assuming he has. Ring's new Smart Video Search capability, which the company announced today, is rolling out by November 5 to all of its Home Pro subscribers, who pay $20 monthly or $200 annually. WIRED tested the feature over the past few days. It couldn't help answer the recurring question in our home: "Did you remember to lock the door?" But searches for "dog pooping," "gardeners," and "rollerblading" brought up mostly accurate results. Hamren, who also oversees three other Amazon home technology units, says Ring blocks searches for content it considers "offensive, inappropriate, or harmful." She declined to elaborate beyond saying that names of weapons and "qualitative terms about people or situations" are among those barred. Our searches for terms some may consider sensitive, including "Black," "turban," and "gun," yielded no results despite there being footage matching those descriptions. "Disabled" returned people scooting by in wheelchairs -- and mothers pushing strollers. Ring notes it will now block searches for "disabled" due to the risk of misuse. Still, the search capability marks a big upgrade for Ring, which over the past decade popularized home surveillance through its video doorbells and a growing suite of other security gadgets. The issue has been that millions of Ring users have been stuck with a massive library of footage -- potentially up to six month's worth -- with minimal features to easily mine the information within it. Hamren, a former Microsoft and Meta hardware executive who joined in March 2023, wanted to bring users insights without them having to fiddle around too much. AI made that possible. Hamren's reign at Ring also has brought a significant shift in the company's pitch to potential customers. "Tough-on-crime" ads showing suspicious characters disappeared. She pulled back on partnerships with police, which had seen Ring develop tools for users to easily share videos with law enforcement agencies without them having to obtain a warrant. Ring's marketing today features adorable footage involving pets and children, and users are encouraged to share whimsical videos to their online communities, not just the serious ones. The focus is no longer on curbing crime but rather on reducing anxiety by allowing customers granular insight into what unfolds in front of the camera. Search is just the start. The new AI models powering search, Hamren says, will eventually enable Ring to notify users about specific situations, such as a bear wandering the backyard or anomalous puddling on the patio. They'll also receive summaries of recent happenings. "Providing you intelligence and context about what's happening is ultimately where we want to go," she says.

I just tried Ring's new AI Smart Video Search feature and I'm blown away by its accuracy

Ring's subscription fee is slightly more palatable now that you can use text to instantly find the clips you're looking for. Ring just unveiled its new AI-powered Smart Video Search feature which rolls out in Beta today. This lets you use text prompts to describe what you're searching for and matches it with recordings from any of your Ring cameras. That removes the hassle of sorting through clips across cameras to find a specific subject like a person in a red hoodie or delivery truck. Smart Video Search will be rolling out in beta on November 5 for camera owners who subscribe to the Ring Home Premium subscription for $19.99 per month. This feature uses Visual Language Modeling powered by Ring AI technology and in-house expertise to match up text to images quickly. After playing with the Smart Video Search for the past few days, its accuracy and time-saving results have added way more value to my Ring subscription. While the company makes some of the best security cameras and best video doorbells we've tested, they don't support local storage so you have to pay a subscription fee just to keep video recordings in the cloud. This benefit offsets that sting. Here's how it worked under this preview period. After updating my Ring app to the latest version, a search box appeared at the top of my "History" tab. Clicking on it allowed me to enroll my individual cameras with Smart Video Search. After about ten minutes of analyzing my clips over the past six months, I could type hyper-specific text descriptors into the search box to find matching clips. In my testing, I could search for "FedEx Truck" and "raccoon in yard at night" to instantly find clips of the offenders who set off the motion events. When I tried Wyze's rival AI-Fueled Video Search last month it struggled with searches as vague as "white cat," which Ring passed with flying colors. Ring's more granular AI search takes things even further by taking you to specific timestamps in each clip that match your prompt. For example, when I typed "cats walking," it didn't just pull up when a single cat popped on the screen. Like a timestamp shortcut on a YouTube video, it took me to the exact moment in time that multiple cats enter the picture to maximize relevancy. While "white dog" accurately spotted my pet, the Wyze results missed some clips that featured the dog front and center earlier in the day. Ring's search system can identify specific things such as "blue shirt," "man with beard," or "garbage bin," -- Wyze AI struggled with attributes. Queries like this were no problem for Ring Smart Video Search, where I could even look for specific animal types or locations. I even typed "pickup truck in the rain" to find my F150 front and center. In fact, the only time it failed to produce a result was when trying to search for specific car models. This makes finding people, animals, vehicles, or packages in specific locations during certain times of the day effortless so you don't have to look through thumbnails manually. I'm mostly surprised that it hasn't mismatched any of my queries. I expected it to confuse cats with clips of raccoons or dogs, yet the AI is smart enough to differentiate. Still, there are some caveats. You have to pay for Ring's Home subscription plan, which costs $20/month or $200 a year. On top of that, Ring cameras lack facial recognition like Arlo, Eufy, and SimpliSafe, which have implemented into their systems to notify you of certain people or cars triggering events. My biggest gripe is that this new search feature will not work with end-to-end encryption enabled. While Ring is not using customer data to train its models, the extra privacy makes me feel better uploading everything to the cloud over local storage. Overall, Ring's AI search performance is much more reliable, whereas Wyze tends to be hit or miss. From recognizing a "delivery man with a white package" to asking for clips of specific trucks (Amazon, FedEx, and UPS), the deeper context feels fully baked -- you'll just have to cough up the monthly subscription fee to use it.

Ring's New AI-Powered Video Search Makes Its Most Expensive Subscription More Tempting

AI Product Integrations Are Stepping Up: These Are the Ones I'm Hyped For Ring isn't done making changes to its most expensive subscription tier. The company has just announced a new AI-powered Smart Video Search to help you find a specific clip from a recorded history. Just Type in What You're Looking For While smart home security cameras from competitors can show notifications for different items like a person, car, or animal, Smart Video Search is a bit different. Available for all Ring products, you can type in a specific query to see if there are any video results. You can be specific like "raccoon in the backyard last night," "red bicycle in the driveway," or "pizza delivery with a red shirt." Ring says you can use search queries relating to animals, locations, packages, people, time, vehicles, weather, and even some activities like running. The smart video search should definitely help you find a specific moment, especially with a number of Ring devices around your home. Currently in a public beta for select customers, the feature will officially roll out on November 5 as part of the Ring Home Premium subscription plan that's $19.99 per month. Great Features, for a Price Earlier this month, Ring announced another new feature for the most expensive subscription tier -- 24/7 recording. Continuous recording will capture all activity, even outside of motion zones. Ring also added a number of new features for all subscription tiers including video Preview Alerts to show a short video clip directly to a notification. You'll also be able to take a look at the Live View for up to 30 minutes. And with Doorbell Calls, when someone rings the doorbell, it will ring your phone like a traditional phone call, and you can speak with your visitor at the door. Subscriptions are unfortunately a major part of most smart home security systems like Ring. If you have multiple Ring cameras, the Home Premium option does look to be worth the extra cost with the Smart Video Search and continuous recording. The other option for multiple cameras, Ring Home Standard is $10 less per month but doesn't offer those two features.

Amazon revamps Ring subscriptions with AI video search | TechCrunch

Amazon is revamping its subscription offerings for its Ring video doorbells and cameras. A new service, called Ring Home Premium, will include features like 24/7 recording and AI-powered video search, starting at $19.99 per month when it launches on November 5 in the U.S. A less-expensive tier, Ring Home, will bundle in basic capabilities, but not 24/7 recording or the upgraded search. Ring's subscription revamp comes as the Amazon subsidiary flies high under its new CEO Liz Hamren, a former Microsoft executive. Ring is now the second-largest seller of security systems in the U.S., according to research firm Parks Associates, and it recently became profitable, Hamren told Bloomberg in May -- six years after Amazon acquired the company for $1 billion. One of the headlining features of Ring Home Premium, Smart Video Search, can help users find specific moments in recorded video footage, Amazon says. Rolling out to select Ring customers in public beta starting today, Smart Video Search lets you type queries into the Ring app to pinpoint noteworthy moments. "You might search for 'raccoon in the backyard last night' and find the answer to why those trash cans were knocked over," wrote Eric Kuhn, Amazon GM of Ring experiences, in a blog post shared with TechCrunch, "Searching for 'red bicycle in the driveway' might turn up endearing videos of your oldest child teaching your youngest how to ride a bike." Initially, Smart Video Search will be limited to search queries about animals, locations, packages, people, time, vehicles, weather and activities (for example, jumping, running, playing, or riding). Amazon said it has implemented safeguards to block searches for potentially offensive or harmful content, and it will fine-tune the search feature over time. Amazon didn't say what steps it has taken, if any, to mitigate potential biases in the AI models powering Smart Video Search. A study from MIT published in August found that commercially available models like OpenAI's GPT-4 were more likely to recommend calling the police when shown Ring videos captured in minority communities. The study also found that, when analyzing footage from majority-white neighborhoods, the models were less likely to describe scenes using terms like "casing the property" or "burglary tools." "Ring is a leader in delivering privacy features for customers, and we're also committed to developing responsible AI." Kuhn wrote. "We have a long history of listening to and learning from our customers." The launch of Smart Video Search comes ahead of Google's promised AI updates to its Nest cameras and doorbells, which will bring detailed captions for camera footage and similar natural-language search functionality.

Upcoming premium Ring doorbell subscription offers AI search

An upcoming premium Ring doorbell subscription will offer 24/7 recording, and AI-powered search, from $19.99 per month. The Amazon-owned company is also renaming two of its existing subscription tiers, while Ring Protect Pro subscribers will have to choose between upgrading or downgrading ... TechCrunch has the details. A new service, called Ring Home Premium, will include features like 24/7 recording and AI-powered video search, starting at $19.99 per month when it launches on November 5 in the U.S. Less-expensive tiers, Ring Home Standard and Ring Home Basic, will bundle in several capabilities, but not 24/7 recording or the upgraded search [...] The old Ring Protect Basic plan is becoming Ring Home Basic ($4.99 per month). Ring Protect Plus will become Ring Home Standard ($9.99 per month). And Ring Protect Pro will become Ring Home Standard with alarm professional monitoring ($9.99 per month) or Ring Home Premium, depending on which customers choose. It's bad news for Ring Protect Pro subscribers, as they'll lose a lot of functionality unless they upgrade. Those subscribed to Ring Protect Pro will lose local video storage, internet backup, and Amazon's Eero Secure suite beginning November 5. If they don't have a Ring Alarm or Ring Alarm Pro device, they'll also lose SOS emergency response. All of these features and more -- including various monitoring capabilities for Amazon's home robot, Astro -- are now gated behind Ring Home Premium. Wired tested the AI search capabilities and reported "mixed results." In WIRED's tests, Ring's search worked decently well on queries including "backpack," "scarf," "speeding cars," "ice cream truck," and "shopping cart." But for many searches, the results were filled with understandable misidentifications. The software interpreted headlights bursting into view from turning cars as "fireworks." "Blonde women" delivered people fitting the description but also golden retrievers. To the AI, anyone with a hand near their face seemed to be "smoking" [...] "Purple hair" included someone in a purple sweater and a bus with purple paint. Ring wouldn't identify a decorative pumpkin but associated with the gourd an orange-vested landscaper who was bundling leaves into a white sack. "Rollerblades" correctly pulled up someone skating about, but "roller blades" (with a space) brought up nothing, because Ring associated "blade" with weaponry. Amazon says that the search feature is a work in progress, and will improve over time.