Ring founder says AI tool aims to 'zero out crime

Siminoff wants to eliminate crime

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff told employees in a leaked email that the company’s AI-powered Search Party tool is a foundation to "zero out crime" in neighborhoods. The internal message, obtained by 404 Media and confirmed by Ring, reveals that the current focus on finding lost dogs is a temporary starting point for the surveillance technology.

Siminoff sent the email to the entire company in October 2025 following the official launch of the feature. He described the technology as the most important innovation in the history of the Amazon-owned company. The founder claimed the AI infrastructure would finally allow Ring to fulfill its original mission of making neighborhoods safer through constant monitoring.

The email surfaced just weeks after Ring faced public backlash for a Super Bowl commercial. That advertisement showed Ring cameras scanning a neighborhood to locate a missing pet. Critics argued the ad demonstrated a level of coordinated surveillance that extends far beyond simple porch security.

AI scans the entire neighborhood

The Search Party feature operates differently than standard Ring motion alerts. While standard cameras record activity on a single property, Search Party creates a networked search across multiple homes. Anyone with the Ring Neighbors app can initiate a search that utilizes footage from surrounding cameras.

Ring currently limits this capability to specific categories like lost dogs and wildfires. The system is active by default for any user with a paid Ring subscription. This means millions of cameras are already part of the search grid unless owners manually opt out.

The technology relies on advanced computer vision to identify specific objects across hours of video. Ring’s current AI tools already allow individual users to filter their own footage for specific triggers:

• People and specific facial characteristics
• Pets including dogs and cats
• Vehicles by color or body type
• Anomalies or unusual patterns of movement
• Environmental hazards like smoke or flames

Critics fear a surveillance network

Privacy advocates argue that Ring is building a dystopian surveillance network under the guise of community helpfulness. The company recently integrated facial recognition features into its software suite. This tool allows the system to identify recurring visitors and alert homeowners to strangers.

The combination of facial recognition and neighborhood-wide AI searching creates a powerful tracking system. Senator Markey recently called on Amazon to discontinue these monitoring features. He cited concerns that the technology turns private citizens into unpaid informants for a centralized data grid.

Ring also maintains a controversial relationship with law enforcement agencies. Through the Community Requests portal, police can ask Ring owners for footage during investigations. While Ring says sharing is voluntary, the company still complies with legal requests and warrants to hand over private data.

Amazon defends the search tools

Ring spokesperson Emma Daniels stated that the company remains focused on providing meaningful context to camera owners. She emphasized that the decision to share footage stays with the customer. The company views Search Party as a way to give neighbors actionable information during local emergencies.

Siminoff expanded on his "zero crime" vision during a recent interview on The Verge’s Decoder podcast. He told Nilay Patel that AI-powered cameras reduce crime by providing context rather than just motion alerts. He believes the system can eventually ignore "unimportant events" and only notify police or neighbors about genuine threats.

The company recently made changes to its third-party partnerships to address some privacy concerns. Ring ended its collaboration with Flock Safety, a company that specializes in license plate recognition cameras. This move followed intense pressure from civil liberties groups regarding the automated tracking of vehicles through residential streets.

The mission to expand AI

The leaked email suggests that Ring’s technical ambitions are far larger than its public marketing suggests. Siminoff told staff that Search Party is the "foundation" for future developments. He wrote that the company finally has the chance to "fully complete" the work it started over a decade ago.

Ring has not specified which "crimes" the AI will eventually target or how it will identify them. The transition from searching for missing pets to searching for criminal activity requires the AI to make subjective judgments. This raises questions about how the software defines suspicious behavior or "anomalies" in a neighborhood setting.

Industry analysts point out that Ring’s business model depends on increasing the utility of its subscription services. By adding advanced AI search capabilities, Ring encourages users to keep their cameras online and their data in the cloud. The Search Party feature represents a significant step toward turning individual doorbells into a unified, searchable database of suburban life.

The company continues to roll out updates to its AI models to improve accuracy. These updates happen automatically for most users, meaning the capabilities of the cameras on their front porches can change overnight. As Ring moves closer to Siminoff's goal of eliminating crime, the line between a doorbell camera and a police-grade surveillance tool continues to blur.