Ring’s AI Can Now Search Every Camera in Your Neighborhood—Starting With Your Dog

The Super Bowl Pitch

Amazon chose the biggest advertising stage in the country to unveil Ring's newest feature. During the February 2026 Super Bowl, a commercial showed a family's dog slipping out of the backyard, followed by Ring cameras across the neighborhood lighting up one by one as the AI tracked the pet's path through the streets and safely back home.

The ad was heartwarming by design. A lost dog. Worried kids. Helpful neighbors. Technology saving the day. But behind the emotional pitch lies a feature that fundamentally changes what Ring's camera network can do. Search Party transforms millions of individual doorbell cameras into a coordinated surveillance system, connected by artificial intelligence and controlled by Amazon.

Amazon framed the feature as a community tool. Privacy researchers saw something very different.

How Search Party Works

Search Party uses computer vision to identify a specific pet from a photograph. When a user reports their pet as missing through the Ring app, the system scans footage from Ring cameras in the surrounding area, looking for visual matches. The AI analyzes body shape, size, coloring, and movement patterns to distinguish the missing pet from other animals.

The feature requires camera owners in the neighborhood to opt in to Search Party. Once enabled, their camera footage becomes searchable by the AI system whenever a nearby user activates a pet search. Amazon says the searching user never sees raw footage from other people's cameras. Instead, they receive alerts with location data and timestamps showing where and when the pet was spotted.

The underlying technology, however, is not limited to identifying animals. Computer vision systems capable of matching a dog from a photograph can just as easily match a person. The technical infrastructure required for pet tracking is identical to the infrastructure required for tracking humans across a camera network.

The Surveillance Infrastructure Already in Place

Ring has more than 20 million cameras installed across the United States. That number represents one of the largest privately owned camera networks in the world, concentrated in residential neighborhoods where public surveillance cameras are typically sparse. In many suburban areas, Ring cameras provide near continuous coverage of streets, sidewalks, driveways, and front yards.

Until now, each Ring camera operated independently. Footage stayed on individual devices and was accessible only to the camera's owner, unless shared through Ring's Neighbors app or requested by law enforcement. Search Party changes this by introducing a centralized AI layer that can query footage across cameras, effectively networking them into a single searchable system.

This is the architecture that privacy advocates have warned about for years. Not a government building cameras on every corner, but a private company assembling a surveillance network one doorbell at a time, then adding the software to make it searchable.

Ring’s History With Law Enforcement

Ring's relationship with police departments has been controversial since the company's early days. Ring has partnered with more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, giving police the ability to request footage from Ring camera owners through the Neighbors app. In some cases, Ring provided footage to law enforcement without the camera owner's knowledge or consent.

After public backlash, Amazon announced in 2024 that Ring would stop allowing police to request footage through the Neighbors app. However, law enforcement can still obtain Ring footage through subpoenas, search warrants, and emergency requests. The company's privacy policy allows it to share footage with authorities in cases involving imminent danger, a standard that critics argue is vaguely defined and broadly applied.

Adding AI powered search capabilities to this existing network raises the stakes considerably. A system designed to find a lost dog today could be adapted to find a missing person, a suspect, or anyone else that law enforcement or Amazon decides to search for tomorrow.

What the Critics Say

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a response to the Search Party announcement calling it a "surveillance nightmare disguised as a pet feature." The EFF argued that the technical capability to search across millions of cameras using AI represents a fundamental shift in what Ring's network can do, regardless of whether the initial use case is limited to pets.

The American Civil Liberties Union echoed those concerns, noting that Ring's opt in requirement provides weak protection against mission creep. Once the infrastructure exists and users are accustomed to the feature, expanding its capabilities to search for people, vehicles, or other objects requires only a software update, not new hardware or new consent.

Both organizations pointed to Ring's track record of gradually expanding surveillance capabilities over time. Features that launched with privacy safeguards were later modified or those safeguards were quietly weakened. The pattern suggests that Search Party's current limitations are a starting point, not a permanent boundary.

The Slippery Slope

The progression from pet tracking to human tracking is not hypothetical. The same computer vision models that identify a golden retriever from a photograph can identify a person from a photograph. Facial recognition, gait analysis, and clothing identification are well established capabilities in commercial AI systems. Ring's parent company Amazon developed its own facial recognition technology, Rekognition, which was marketed to law enforcement before the company imposed a moratorium on police use in 2020.

Search Party establishes the precedent that Ring cameras can be searched collectively by AI. Today the search target is a pet. The question privacy advocates are asking is what comes next. A missing child feature would be nearly impossible to oppose publicly. A stolen vehicle search would seem reasonable. Each expansion normalizes the idea that a network of private cameras can be searched by an algorithm, until the infrastructure for mass surveillance is fully operational and broadly accepted.

What You Can Do

Ring camera owners can choose not to opt in to Search Party. The feature is not enabled by default, and Amazon says it will remain optional. However, social pressure from neighbors and the emotional appeal of helping find lost pets may make opting out feel antisocial, which is likely by design.

For those concerned about the broader implications, the most effective action is to understand what Ring cameras in your neighborhood are already recording. Ring cameras capture footage of public spaces, including sidewalks, streets, and neighboring properties, regardless of whether Search Party is enabled. The AI feature adds a new layer of searchability to footage that is already being collected.

Privacy advocates recommend supporting local legislation that regulates how camera networks can be used and how footage can be shared with third parties, including law enforcement. Several cities have already passed ordinances requiring transparency about surveillance technology deployed in residential areas. As Ring's capabilities grow, these local protections become increasingly important.