Move Over, Puppy Bowl: Ring’s Dog-Rescuing Super Bowl Ad Brings Tears and Tech

It’s only been a few months since security brand Ring rolled out its Search Party feature to locate lost dogs. The company claims to have already helped pet owners find more than one lost dog per day.

Now ring it’s going much bigger with the projectshowing up in a cute Super Bowl spot and allowing anyone to benefit from Search Party, even if they don’t have a Ring security camera.

Search Party is a particularly innovative use of Advanced Home AIwhich Ring adopted last year to help identify objects, summarize captured videos and save time. The Ring, owned by Amazon, then expanded use suitable for pets in Search Party, unlike anything I’ve seen before, allowing Ring users to post photos of lost pets to the Ring Neighbors platform.

If you sign up, the captured outdoor video is sent to Ring for analysis. If the cameras detect a pet that the AI ​​interprets as resembling a lost dog reported on the platform, you will receive a notification, with the option to share the information and location with the concerned pet owner.

The AI ​​gamble has proven successful – so successful that Ring is dramatically speeding up Search Party, just in time for the Super Bowl. Now, Search Party is available to anyone who signs up for the Ring Neighborhood app, but you no longer need a Ring Cam or video doorbell. The only limitation is that the detection service is currently only available to people living in the United States.

Ring also announced a $1 million project to provide animal shelters across the country. with Ring cameraswhich would probably make Search Party even more effective if a four-legged friend was already brought to a shelter.

If the Super Bowl commercial isn’t enough to move you, Ring’s ad also includes several stories from pet owners who used Search Party to locate their furry family, including a very cute pooch who was found in just 15 minutes.

Finally, there has been a lot of discussion and conflicting information surrounding Ring cameras and Flock surveillance. Flock is known for sharing license plate and drone footage with local police departments and other law enforcement agencies, which has made people wary of letting the company near their home security cameras.

However, although Ring has an upcoming partnership with Flock, the collaboration has not yet started. When this happens, you will need to manually give consent to share videos for each new event.

If you’re interested in cameras that can detect lost pets or protect your packages, check out my guides to the best cheap video doorbells and the best cheap security cameras to see what is available on a limited budget.