What Amazon Ring’s New ‘Search Party’ Feature Means for Your Privacy
What Amazon Ring’s New ‘Search Party’ Feature Means for Your Privacy
Publish Date: 2026-02-10 09:25:00
Source Domain: www.cnet.com
Amazon’s Ring hit it big with its Super Bowl ad about pet tracking, but possibly not in the way the security company wanted. In the wake of the ad on Search Party, or AI pet recognition using Ring cameras, many people on Reddit and elsewhere shared their concerns about AI surveillance, privacy fears and how the technology could be potentially used.
This stirred up a cloud of misinformation that I’m dealing with using a brief FAQ. Ring’s Search Party feature really does help save lost pets, and it gives you tools to handle privacy the way you want. Ring employees will not be viewing your videos trying to find pets or for any other reason without your explicit permission.
If you don’t like the AI analysis Ring is using here, there are plenty of alternatives — although this technology is rapidly becoming a core part of home security.
How does Search Party work, exactly?
Search Party uses AI to find lost dogs, something no other security brand is doing.
Search Party is a part of the Ring Neighbors platform, available on the Ring app to let people share information about local events or help needed. If a Ring account holder loses a pet, they can use the Search Party function to upload a picture of their dog as a pet profile and activate a search for free.
Search Party then scans nearby Ring accounts to see whether any recent videos were uploaded after an animal was detected. Using Ring’s AI, the feature automatically looks for animals that resemble the photo of the lost pet.
If a match is found, Search Party alerts the pet owner to the general location where a similar animal was spotted. It also notifies the Ring device owner, who can decide whether to share the video with the pet owner and other neighbors on the Neighbors platform.
Is Search Party an opt-in feature?
The basic functions of Search Party are opt-out, which means they’re automatically enabled for Ring devices that save video to the cloud. Sharing video clips with a pet owner is a separate feature…
