Ring’s new generative AI feature is here to answer your ‘who’s there?’ or ‘what was that?’ questions

Ring just added new Video Descriptions, a feature powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that will offer richer notifications of what your Ring cameras capture. The company hopes this generative AI-powered feature will provide you with more meaningful information to help you distinguish between urgent and everyday activities.

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“Today’s advancements in AI represent something truly extraordinary — perhaps it’s safe to say this is the first technology that’s impossible to overhype,” said Jamie Siminoff, Ring founder, in an announcement. “This has challenged me not to think about how AI can make Ring better, but to explore how we would build Ring today if we started with AI as the foundation.”

The Ring Video Description feature processes your video to distinguish what was captured by the camera. Instead of sending your phone a notification that alerts you to motion or a detected person, the Ring app will generate a description of the event.

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This means you’ll get an app notification saying, “two people walking on the driveway with a white dog,” instead of a simple “person detected.”

Compatibility and availability

The Ring Video Description feature is compatible with all currently available Ring doorbells and cameras. It’s beginning to roll out in beta today to Ring Home Premium subscribers in the US and Canada, so it is part of a paid subscription. It’s also currently available in English only.

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“We are just starting to scratch the surface of AI,” Siminoff added. “I feel like we are back to the very early days of Ring again — I see unlimited potential for new experiences we can invent for our neighbors. The team and I look forward to introducing new impactful features to all our products, making them better and better, and helping us deliver on our mission to help protect our neighborhoods and communities.”

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Ring is reportedly also working on new AI-powered features to combine different clips from multiple cameras together to build an event, as well as custom anomaly alerts. The latter will generate alerts when something happens that is an anomaly on your property, which means Ring will learn different patterns from your specific uses.

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