Amazon’s Ring “Lost Dog” Commercial Sparks Backlash Over AI Surveillance Fears

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Amazon’s home security subsidiary Ring has faced criticism for its Super Bowl commercial promoting an AI-powered feature meant to help find lost dogs, raising fears of the implications for individual privacy. 

The 30-second commercial highlighted Ring’s Search Party tool, which uses doorbell cameras and AI to compare neighborhood footage with images uploaded to the Ring Neighbors app for dogs reported missing. If a camera detects a match, Ring notifies the owner of the camera, who can then share the video with the dog owner. 

The company revealed that this tool had helped reunite at least one dog with its owner every day since launch.

However, some viewers argued it normalizes surveillance under the guise of community safety, raising the question of what would stop the technology from being applied to scanning human beings.

Privacy expert Chris Gilliard voiced alarm that the technology could be used to track people, a fear amplified by Ring’s partnership with Flock, a surveillance camera maker that shares footage with law enforcement agencies. However, this integration with Flock is not yet live. 

Senator Ed Markey has urged Amazon to reconsider the technology’s deployment, writing: 

Amazon apparently intended its Super Bowl commercial to demonstrate that its new technologies could identify lost pets. Instead, Amazon inadvertently revealed the serious privacy and civil liberties risks attendant to these types of Artificial Intelligence-enabled image recognition technologies. And notably unmentioned in Amazon’s commercial is that it rolled out [facial recognition technology] in its Ring doorbells last year. It’s not hard to imagine the ways that Amazon—or law enforcement—could abuse this feature.

Ring, however, insists Search Party is not capable of processing human biometric data, is separate from its facial recognition capabilities, and that video sharing is always voluntary or in response to a legal request. The company also emphasizes that government or law enforcement agencies cannot access the network.