Ring began rolling out artificial intelligence-powered video descriptions to its doorbell and security cameras today, replacing generic motion alerts with detailed text summaries of what the devices capture.
The feature, called Video Descriptions, provides Ring Home Premium subscribers in the United States and Canada with notifications such as "A person is walking up the steps with a black dog" or "Two people are peering into a white car in the driveway" instead of basic alerts like "motion detected". The beta launch marks Amazon's latest push to integrate AI across its home security ecosystem.
The generative AI system analyzes the first few seconds of motion-triggered video clips and generates concise text descriptions of the main subject and their actions12. Ring's technology uses Visual Language Modeling to match text descriptions with images, similar to capabilities found in Google's Gemini AI34.
"Video Descriptions uses real intelligence to describe only the main subject that caused a motion alert and what action they are taking," Ring founder Jamie Siminoff wrote in a company blog post5. The descriptions are designed to help users quickly determine whether an alert requires immediate attention.
The video descriptions represent what Siminoff called "one of the first cornerstone pieces" of Ring's expanded AI work1. The company plans to introduce additional features including custom anomaly alerts that learn household routines and notify users only when unusual activity occurs12.
Ring also intends to develop intelligent motion aggregation, which would combine multiple motion events around a property into single alerts13. These features build on the company's existing Smart Video Search capability, which launched in beta last year and allows users to search their video history using text prompts45.
The English-only feature is available to Ring Home Premium subscribers, who pay $20 monthly or $200 annually1. It works with all currently available Ring doorbells and cameras, and users can disable the feature through their app settings23.
The launch comes as home security companies increasingly incorporate AI to differentiate their services. Google has announced similar video search capabilities for its Nest cameras, though without a specific timeline4.
"Today's advancements in AI represent something truly extraordinary," Siminoff said in the announcement56. The founder, who returned to Amazon in April after previously leading Ring, suggested this represents just the beginning of the company's AI integration efforts.
