Super Bowl adverts often draw discussion. This year, between AI-generated art and slots for weight loss drugs and gambling sites, the smart-doorbell company Ring claimed the crown for the most controversial ad so far.
It tells the story of how the AI and camera upgrades in Ring’s new Search Party feature help reunite a family with its lost dog. Milo is located because all the neighbours have Ring doorbells, and thanks to the linked-up footage from their cameras across the neighbourhood, he is found – a cute and definitely not sinister reason for having a doorbell camera in every home.
But it is, of course, dystopian and creepy, and immediately sparked discussion online. If they can track your dogs, what else can they track? Cats? Or, more importantly, people?
The internet's dog experts were not impressed. One of social media’s foremost canine-friendly accounts, known on TikTok, Instagram, X, and the rest as WeRateDogs, broke down what the ad was really trying to do.
“Ring’s Super Bowl advert this year uses dogs to manufacture consent for mass surveillance,” WeRateDogs’ owner said in a video, pointing out that the linked video system is the perfect vehicle for turning homes into spy outposts and neighbours into unwitting government informants. The clip went swiftly viral, clocking up 300k views on YouTube and 1.5m on Instagram. It says something when one of the internet’s leading cute dog accounts is pushing out warnings about the consequences of surveillance.
Ring is owned by Amazon, which acquired the company in 2018. There have been concerns around the data that the doorbells collect from users, with some people claiming online to have returned their devices as a result. Ring recently implemented new facial recognition capabilities in the US, which can track the faces of known individuals, usually family or friends, interacting with the doorbells.
This has also raised privacy issues, as has a Ring partnership, announced in October, with Flock Safety – a company that advertises its services to “eliminate crime” and is used by law enforcement agencies to monitor vehicles via number-plate data. On Thursday, following the backlash, Amazon announced it was cancelling the partnership.
Ring has insisted that the system is not about mass surveillance, and that there are app features and subscriptions that control what is seen and shared with neighbours. In the meantime, WeRateDogs has suggested better ways to retrieve a lost dog: ensure they are microchipped and check in on local Facebook groups, who are “scarily efficient” at reuniting kids with their four legged friends.