Ring is shifting from doorbells to an AI-powered home assistant, founder says

Jamie Siminoff, founder of video doorbell maker Ring, said the company is moving beyond doorbells toward an AI-powered “intelligent assistant” for the home and beyond, with a set of new features that shipped just ahead of this year’s CES in Las Vegas. New additions include fire alerts, alerts about “unusual events,” conversational AI, facial recognition features and more.

Siminoff said the Palisades fires, which destroyed the garage where Ring was born, and advances in AI helped persuade him to return to the company he had sold to Amazon. One feature, Fire Watch, built with nonprofit Watch Duty, lets customers opt in to share footage during massive fires so AI can look for smoke, fire and embers; another, Search Party, uses a dog “facial recognition” match for lost pets and is reuniting about one family per day, Siminoff said.

Some moves have drawn controversy. Ring ended an earlier police partnership in 2024 but has since struck deals with companies such as Flock Safety and Axon that again let law enforcement request images and videos from customers. Siminoff defended those choices, saying customers choose whether to share and that agencies do not know which customers were asked; he also said, as the outlet reported, that surveillance including Ring’s helped find the shooter in the Brown University incident, a claim he made.

The company’s “Familiar Faces” feature has drawn criticism from the EFF and a U.S. senator.

Key Topics

Tech, Ring, Ces, Jamie Siminoff, Fire Watch, Search Party