“A new feature from Ring Camera is causing a stir online. The AI-powered ‘search party’ feature helps locate lost pets, but some are questioning its impact on privacy.” — NBC News
Oh no, did Buster get out again? Because your white-picket-fence suburban dream doesn’t actually include a physical fence? That’s terrible. Hopefully, he doesn’t run in the direction of the freeway right over there. Time is of the essence to get him back—let us help you; give us access to your Ring camera. Give us access to every Ring camera in your neighborhood.
We at Ring believe dogs are part of the family. And family is more important than silly, abstract, Constitutional things like a citizen’s “right to privacy.” Ring’s Search Party is a one-of-a-kind AI tool that is for finding dogs, and totally not for spying on you and your neighbors, monitoring and cataloging all of your movements and interactions 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Relax.
Here, Buster! Come on home, Buster!
Ring reunites one lost pet with a family each day. Which is not a bad batting average, considering 10 million pets go missing each year. A 0.00365 percent yearly success rate is good. This is the whole point!
Side note: It’s actually pretty alarming that roughly 27,000 of y’all’s households are losing their pets left and right each day. Like what’s going on there? Keep your doors shut, and your dogs leashed, good grief.
Are there any downsides to such intricate, constant, widespread surveillance? Well, we struggle with finding cats. All cats, scientifically speaking, look the exact same. So when we say “missing pets,” we really just mean dogs. Don’t even play about rabbits and guinea pigs—rodents aren’t pets. Yes, we believe rabbits count as rodents. You can quote us on that. Also, our “we find lost dogs” pledge does not include doodles, which are barely dogs.
That being said, our amazing technology is not solely limited to dogs! We can help find your beloved toddler who toddled off your lawn and down the street. (You really should build a damn fence!) Dogs, toddlers, people of federal interest—we can find anyone we have a financial stake in finding!
Search Party is most effective when all of your neighbors participate. And while you can’t legally install a Ring camera on your neighbor’s porch without their permission (trust us, we’ve checked), you can strongly insinuate that if they don’t get a Ring camera, they want every single dog on Earth to die. To literally die right there in front of them. To die right now, horrifically. Even Cruella de Vil only wanted a couple dozen Dalmatians to bite it, not all dogs everywhere all at once. A little light-hearted neighborly ultimatum is going to go a long way in this mission—this mission to reunite all lost dogs with their owners, and nothing else!
Fans of social theorist Jeremy Bentham may be raising their hysterical red flags with buzzwords like “surveillance state” and “panopticon”—but we’re here to tell you this is really just about the dogs. We swear. (For now.) Bow wow!
We’re hearing concerns about ICE accessing and abusing this data. To that we say: Why are you making this political? It’s about DOGS. Dogs don’t vote. Yes, doodles are inherently Republican, but like we said, we can’t find those guys. They’re just a fuzzy, untrained blur on the screen.
Our connection to Palantir might raise eyebrows, but we’re more concerned about wagging tails. Our pals at Palantir only have Man’s Best Friend on their mind. Plus, if you’re a person of interest to Palantir, you really have bigger issues at hand than a simple lost dog. You’re not seeing that dog again, buddy.
Besides, how much privacy do you really need in your front yard anyway? What are you even doing there that’s so secretive? Read your mail and your texts inside if you’re that concerned. It’s not like we’re keeping a camera in your house—that’s Roomba’s domain.
Good news: We found Buster! Bad news: You didn’t tell us he was a doodle, so it might not actually be Buster. Sorry.
