Wyze Introduces AI-Powered "No Big Deal" Filter to Reduce Security Camera Notification Fatigue

Wyze's new camera filter claims to cut down on nuisance alerts

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is a smart home reporter who's been testing connected gadgets since 2013. Previously a contributor to Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, and US News. Security cameras can be helpful for spotting package thieves, letting you know when your kid got home from school, or scaring off that rascally raccoon rustling around your chicken coop. But constant notifications from these devices can make them more annoying than useful. Notification fatigue once made me ignore the repeated motion alerts from a camera when I was enjoying an Easter egg hunt with my kids. I got home to find a dog had killed all my chickens. Now, if those alerts had said "dog chasing chicken" rather than just "motion detected," I would have paid more attention. This is the problem that Wyze is attempting to solve with its new "No Big Deal" (NBD) AI filter, which is launching today to owners of its security cameras with a Cam Unlimited Pro subscription. The idea is that Wyze's AI filters the events the camera sees and only alerts you to the most important ones, such as "Person breaking into car" or "Baby climbing out of crib." Wyze says it also won't repeatedly send you the same alerts -- for example, if your kids are playing ball in the front yard for a couple of hours, it will only send an additional notification if a new or unusual activity is detected. The NBD Filter is part of Wyze's $19.99 per month or $199.99 per year Cam Unlimited Pro subscription. Wyze says it "provides an intelligent layer of discernment to decide whether a notification is 'no big deal' or worthy of alerting the user." The company says it trained its AI model to rank detected motions on a scale from one to five, only sending users notifications for "highly ranked events that require attention." (Recordings of all events are still stored in your app.) Examples it shared include: The NBD Filter builds on the company's AI-powered Descriptive Alerts, launched in January. These alerts send detailed descriptions of events rather than simply alerting you to motion or that a person, pet, or vehicle has been detected. With the filter, the system uses those descriptions to decide whether to alert you. The company added AI-powered search last year, allowing you to search recorded footage by keyword. Last year, the company also suffered from a number of security issues, including inadvertently letting unauthorized users see into other people's homes. A number of well-known security camera companies have been adding generative AI-powered features to their systems over the last year, but Wyze is the first to launch this type of notification filter. Ring launched an AI-powered search feature last year, and Google Nest cameras added descriptive alerts powered by Gemini as a beta feature last summer. Arlo also recently added AI-powered personalized alerts, and a new company, Seemour.AI, provides descriptive alerts for Ring cameras for free. We'll likely see filtering functionality come to more companies soon, but it also carries a fair amount of risk. While cutting down on the number of alerts a camera sends you is definitely a step in the right direction, it's a big shift to go from sending you notifications for everything you asked to be notified about to deciding what you should be told about. When the camera chooses what to show you, you will not be happy if it misses something you deem important. It's also not clear what type of control the user will have over Wyze's NBD Filter. For example, I want to know every time my cat is at my back door, but it seems like Wyze would consider that an unimportant event. I'll be testing out Wyze's new feature, as well as those from Ring, Arlo, Nest, and others, and will report back soon.

Wyze Cam adds 'no big deal' AI filter to cut down on your notifications

Wyze just introduced a new feature called the "No Big Deal" (NBD) filter to reduce unnecessary notifications. This is meant to address the excessive notifications that come with a security camera, including false alerts and unimportant NBD events. Also: The hardest-working floodlight and security camera I've tested is $70 off right now Imagine you have a camera by your garage and spend a few hours cleaning your garage or doing yard work, for example. Reducing repetitive notifications by marking them as NBD would prevent your phone from getting motion-detection notifications every minute. Instead, your Wyze Cam would recognize that as an unimportant, repetitive activity and stop sending notifications for up to a three-hour block of time. The NBD filter uses artificial intelligence to score notifications from 1 to 5, depending on the type of activity detected. The higher the score, the more critical the event. A score of 1 would include mundane, low-importance activities, like leaves blowing in the wind or a car driving by. A score of 5 would be reserved for consequential situations, like a stranger near your door or the sound of glass breaking. Here are some examples Wyze gives to explain each score: The NBD filter will only be available with a Cam Unlimited Pro plan, which costs $20 monthly. This AI-powered filter complements the Wyze Descriptive Alerts released in January. The Cam Unlimited Pro subscription uses AI to generate an alert description and intelligently search through up to 60 days of event recordings. The plan also includes 24/7 emergency dispatch. Also: This $50 anti-spy camera finder I recommend to travelers is cheaper than ever - how it works To filter alerts as either NBD or critical, Wyze uses AI to analyze video footage and score them. For now, Wyze is conservative with filtering notifications by only sending a phone notification for events that get a score of 2-5. The company says it will consider further user feedback to potentially exclude notifications from scores 1 and 2 in the future. The scores aren't visible or controllable from the user experience, so users aren't currently able to change the score on their footage. But Wyze is planning to give users full control to personalize the settings on their cameras. Get the morning's top stories in your inbox each day with our Tech Today newsletter.

Wyze security cameras now leverage AI to fight notification fatigue

6 smart home devices you should never buy no matter how cheap they are Summary Wyze introduces an AI-based "NBD" Notifications Filter to categorize events, reducing unnecessary alerts. The filter prioritizes critical events like glass breaking, avoiding notification overload for users. It's included in the Cam Unlimited Pro subscription for $20/month, supporting all Wyze cameras. Few smart home devices make as much sense as security cameras, which cost next to nothing compared to the practical safety and peace of mind they provide. But constant false alarms can lead to notification fatigue, and might lead to users overlooking alerts when they really matter. Wyze, manufacturer of some of the most capable outdoor security cameras, wants to fix that. Its Descriptive Alerts already use AI to summarize what it captures, so you don't have to study every clip the second you learn about it. Now, its "NBD" Notifications Filter is expanding the use of machine learning to automatically categorize detected events and tell users if something's worthy of immediate attention, or if it's really no big deal. Related Wyze Cam v4 review: Not the best, but better than the last It's a budget camera, but an excellent budget camera Posts Putting the focus on what you need to see And filing away for later the things you don't Close An endless swarm of notifications is enough to turn anybody off smart home devices, but it's something almost every user experiences from time to time. Even precise descriptions in plain English get old and in the way when there are too many of them. So the company applied an AI filter to score a wide range of potential daily events, and make sure you receive notice of the most critical ones. Nobody buys a security camera to watch the wind blow. -- Dave Crosby, Wyze co-founder We love a clever, straightforward feature name, and the NBD filter does exactly that. It filters out notifications that are no big deal, like a plastic bag floating in the wind, or a smart robotic vacuum doing its job. It also keeps tabs on and prevents overly repetitive notifications, like an ongoing windstorm you already know about, or a lawn-mowing session that takes an hour. Ever seen those terrifying alert images that turn out to be a moth landing on a video doorbell? The NBD filter is built to squash them (the alerts, not the bug). Cars passing your home but not stopping, and just barely triggering your motion detection zones, won't clog your notification shade anymore. And you won't get a worried message from your Wyze cam just because you, the user, walked into a room. The feature scores events from 1 to 5, keeping unimportant issues quiet, but drawing your attention more closely to more meaningful events like a package arriving. It puts extra emphasis on likely critical occurrences like glass breaking or someone loitering on your doorstep. The streamlined alert delivery makes it considerably less daunting to check your notifications -- you won't have to dread wading through a bunch of unhelpful events to get to the important things that happen while you're away. The upgraded feature comes with Wyze's Cam Unlimited Pro subscription, priced at $20 per month or $200 per year. While that's not exactly cheap, it includes app-connected emergency dispatch in addition to 60-day rolling cloud storage, which could potentially avert disaster and provide powerful context when dealing with security events after the fact. It's supported by all current Wyze cameras, and available now.

Wyze adds AI-powered filter to its security cameras to cut down on notifications that are "no big deal"

Get only the most important information from your home security cameras Today, Wyze has announced a new AI-powered feature that adds AI-powered intelligence to its Cam Unlimited Pro subscription. The feature, called "NBD" for no big deal, is a filter that uses AI to intelligently review camera events to determine whether or not they're worthy of notifying users. Based on Wyze's Descriptive Alerts technology, this feature can accurately summarize events when motion is detected and then categorize them on a scale of 1 to 5 to determine if they are worth sending a notification to the user or not. This means that alerts that are sent to the user are ones that are of high importance, and that include plenty of critical detail. The motion events are ranked by the AI on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being events that are determined to be of lower importance or events that are routine. For example, expected activities such as a robot vacuum performing its usual routing cleaning, a bug flying by, cars driving or even the user entering into the room would all rank a 1. On the other hand, a score of 3 would be events that would warrant the users attention, such as a package delivery or a child crying, while the highest score of 5 would be critical situations such as glass breaking or a stranger lingering near your front door. Wyze has also announced that it will be adding 60 day cloud storage and emergency dispatch directly into the Wyze app to the Cam Unlimited Pro subscription which runs $20/month or $200/year.