What does it take to bring a burned-out founder back<\/a> to the company he sold to Amazon? For Jamie Siminoff of the video doorbell maker Ring, it was the potential of AI \u2014 and the Palisades fires that destroyed his garage, the birthplace of Ring itself.<\/p>\n Siminoff\u2019s vision: turn Ring from a video doorbell company into an AI-powered \u201cintelligent assistant\u201d for the entire home and beyond. A handful of new features that advance that goal shipped<\/a> just ahead of this year\u2019s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, including fire alerts, alerts about \u201cunusual events,\u201d conversational AI<\/a>, facial recognition<\/a> features, and more. Some of these additions have not been without controversy<\/a>, as consumers have to grapple with how much privacy they\u2019re giving up in favor of convenience and security. But together, they point to Ring\u2019s latest phase of its business.<\/p>\n \u201cTurn AI backwards \u2014 it\u2019s IA, it\u2019s an intelligent assistant,\u201d Siminoff explained in a conversation at CES last week. \u201cWe keep doing these things together that are making us smarter, and making it so that, for you, there\u2019s less cognitive load.\u201d <\/p>\n By 2023, five years after selling Ring to Amazon<\/a>, Siminoff had been running at full throttle for so long that he needed out<\/a>. \u201cI built the company in my garage\u2026I was there for all of it. We then get to Amazon, and I go even faster \u2014 like, more throttle,\u201d Siminoff told TechCrunch. \u201cI didn\u2019t get to Amazon and say, \u2018I\u2019m an exited entrepreneur, I\u2019ll just chill out,\u2019\u201d he adds. \u201cI blasted the f**king gas.\u201d<\/p>\n When he later decided to depart the retail giant, he said it was because it felt like the time was right \u2014 Ring had delivered its products and was profitable. AI\u2019s advances soon had him rethinking his plans. <\/p>\n Though Siminoff could have done anything, he wasn\u2019t motivated to start something new because the things he was most excited about were those he wanted to build on Ring\u2019s platform. <\/p>\n \u201cAI comes out, and you realize, \u2018Oh my God, there\u2019s so much we could do,\u2019\u201d Siminoff said. \u201cAnd then the fires happened,\u201d he adds, referring to the devastating Palisades Fires that impacted Siminoff\u2019s neighbors and burned the back of his house, destroying the garage where Ring was built<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of Ring\u2019s new additions, Fire Watch<\/a>, was inspired by this tragedy. In partnership with\u00a0the nonprofit fire monitoring organization Watch Duty<\/a>, Ring customers will be able to opt in to share footage when a massive fire event happens, allowing the organization to build a better map that can be used to help deploy firefighting resources more efficiently. The AI will be used in that case to look for smoke, fire, embers, and more in the shared footage.<\/p>\n Another recently launched AI feature, Search Party, also aims to solve real-world problems as it helps people find their lost pets<\/a>. That feature is now reuniting one family per day with their dogs \u2014 a rate higher than Siminoff expected.<\/p>\n \u201cI had hoped to find one dog by the end of Q1\u2026that was my goal. No one\u2019s ever done anything remotely like this, and I just didn\u2019t know how the AI would work,\u201d he admits. The AI, a sort of \u201cfacial recognition for dogs,\u201d tries matching a posted image of a lost pet with Ring footage, which users opt into sharing if they get an alert about a possible match.<\/p>\n Other moves, however, have raised concerns, particularly those that saw the company forging deals with law enforcement. In 2024, Ring ended<\/a> an earlier set of police partnerships that allowed police to request footage from Ring owners after some customer backlash. But this year, the company moved forward with new deals with companies like Flock Safety and Axon,<\/a> which reintroduced tools that again allow law enforcement to request images and videos from Ring\u2019s customers.<\/p>\n Siminoff defends the company\u2019s decisions in this space, saying that customers can choose whether or not they want to share their Ring footage. <\/p>\n \u201cThe requesting agency doesn\u2019t even know that they asked you,\u201d he says. That is, if police are looking for someone who\u2019s been breaking into cars in a certain geographic area, the alert will go out, and customers can respond if they choose. If customers decline, it\u2019s anonymous. <\/p>\n He also points to the Brown University shooting in December. A combination of surveillance cameras<\/a> \u2014 including Ring\u2019s<\/a>, Siminoff claims, helped to find the mass shooter.<\/p>\n \u201cScrutiny is fine\u2026I welcome it, but I\u2019m glad that we stood up to it, because in the Brown shooting, the police needed this,\u201d the founder says. \u201cIf we had caved to people\u2019s \u2018maybe\u2019s,\u2019 and the scrutiny that they were giving us \u2014 [that] I don\u2019t think is correct \u2014 the police wouldn\u2019t have had a tool to try to help find this [shooter], and the community would not have had the ability to as easily share in what was happening and as fast.\u201d <\/p>\n Despite the successful capture of the shooting suspect, there are<\/a> still worries<\/a> about what the mounting collection of data from private customers means for the landscape of the country. Plus, some are concerned that the data could be misused to go after anyone the government decides to target.<\/p>\n Another AI feature, \u201cFamiliar Faces<\/a>,\u201d has also received pushback from the consumer protection organization EFF<\/a>, along with a U.S. senator<\/a>.<\/p>\n The facial recognition feature uses AI<\/a> to allow Ring to identify and store the faces of people who come in and out of the home on a regular basis, including their names, if provided. This way, you could get an alert that \u201cmom\u201d is at the front door, or that the babysitter arrived, or the kids are home from school, for instance. The feature could also be used to help disable alerts about people whose comings and goings don\u2019t need to be watched closely. <\/p>\n Siminoff defends this, too, as a way for Ring to become more personalized to its users and customize the software to adapt to the unique \u201cfingerprint\u201d of their house. That way, the customer has to interact less with Ring\u2019s products, unless it\u2019s something that requires attention. <\/p>\n He argues that this addition builds on trust with Ring\u2019s customers, rather than undermining it. <\/p>\n \u201cOur products will not be on neighbors\u2019 houses if they don\u2019t trust us\u2026.There\u2019s no incentive for us to do something that would lose trust with our neighbors in maintaining their privacy,\u201d Siminoff says. \u201cAnyone \u2014 and I would respect it \u2014 would take their camera off of their home if they felt like we were violating their privacy.\u201d <\/p>\n But with Ring\u2019s expansion into commercial camera systems, including mounted cameras<\/a>, a line of sensors, and a solar-powered trailer<\/a>, also introduced just ahead of CES, the company\u2019s customer base won\u2019t just be neighbors protecting their homes but also businesses, job sites, campuses, festivals, parking lots, and everywhere else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_0539.jpg?w=680\")
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