By Sharon Zhang<\/p>\n
This article was originally published by Truthout<\/a><\/p>\n Ring\u2019s AI-powered network is likely to be used in its partnerships with law enforcement and agencies like ICE.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In an ad during the Super Bowl on Sunday night, Amazon\u2019s Ring touted the establishment of an AI-powered surveillance network through their camera systems, which the company whitewashed under a feel-good narrative about finding lost dogs.<\/p>\n The ad<\/a> for Ring\u2019s free \u201cSearch Party\u201d program urges users to \u201cbe a hero\u201d by using their surveillance cameras to help identify lost dogs in their neighborhood. It aired to millions of viewers during Super Bowl LX on Sunday night.<\/p>\n \u201cPets are family, but every year, 10 million go missing,\u201d narrated Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, over uncanny, seemingly AI-generated clips of lost dog posters adhered to poles. A huge proportion of the ads during the Super Bowl were for<\/a> or featured AI, frustrating many<\/a> viewers.<\/p>\n \u201cSearch Party from Ring uses AI to help families find lost dogs,\u201d he said, while the video showed Ring camera footage in which the software detects a dog in the frame. The company\u2019s website says that the Search Party app can also be used by non-Ring camera owners.<\/p>\n Amazon\u2019s website also touts<\/a> Ring\u2019s goal of equipping over 4,000 animal shelters across the U.S. with Ring camera systems, a $1 million initiative, claiming this will further help locate lost pets.<\/p>\n However, the attempt at telling a heartwarming story of reuniting dogs with their owners masks Ring\u2019s true intentions of creating a nationwide surveillance system, analysts noted.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt starts with searching for a \u2018brown dog\u2019 but means the tech is there for license plate reading, face recognition, searching for suspects by description, etc,\u201d wrote<\/a> surveillance and policing expert and scholar Matthew Guariglia on social media. \u201cWe already know they have a form cops can fill out to get access to footage without warrant or permission in an \u2018emergency\u2019 as determined by them. What will this mean for new features?\u201d<\/p>\n Guariglia noted that Ring would likely make the AI-powered features on by default, requiring users to manually search their settings to turn it off.<\/p>\n Indeed, Ring has come under intense scrutiny for its collaboration with the criminal legal system, especially through its partnerships directly with police and with surveillance companies Flock and Axon, which grant law enforcement access<\/a> to an enormous amount of information, including tracking of individuals, license plate recognition, and more.<\/p>\n Flock\u2019s dragnet has been used<\/a> by federal immigration agents to track immigrants and search for a person who received an abortion. It has also helped corporations make watch lists, following in the history of corporate blacklists of labor and social movement organizers.<\/p>\n While Flock\u2019s hardware is largely in use in public locations, Ring cameras are ubiquitous in neighborhoods today. According to Consumer Reports, 30 percent<\/a> of U.S. households have a video doorbell camera, with Ring being one of the most popular brands. Access to that network gives Flock and law enforcement eyes in neighborhoods across the U.S., with the ability to track millions of Americans.<\/p>\n A feature that the ad didn\u2019t mention, for instance, is Ring\u2019s \u201cFamiliar Faces<\/a>\u201d program. According to the company\u2019s website, this beta feature \u201cuses Ring Artificial Intelligence (AI) to recognize people.\u201d Users help train the AI system to recognize particular faces over time, it says, so they can then receive a \u201cpersonalized notification\u201d when that particular person is at the door. The feature also \u201cworks with 24\/7 Continuous Recording,\u201d the website says, referring to<\/a> their cameras\u2019 ability to record audio and video<\/a> at all times.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> was originally published by Truthout<\/a> and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)<\/a>. Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sharon Zhang This article was originally published by Truthout Ring\u2019s AI-powered network is likely to be used…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-459210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}