Ring Wants Your Help to Find Lost Dogs—But Is the Privacy Trade-Off Worth It?

The 2026 Super Bowl saw a lot of ads for companies touting new AI features, and the Ring AI ad just might be the creepiest of them all. The home security company wants you to opt into “Search Party,” their newest feature. But by doing so, you’re ceding control over your cameras and risking significant privacy loss.

What Is “Search Party”?

Ring’s ad bills “Search Party” as the newest and most efficient way to find missing pets. According to the ad, if your dog goes missing, you can upload a picture of it to the app, ask it to start a “search party,” and it will automatically activate your neighbors’ cameras (the ones who have opted into the Search Party feature, that is). Using AI, the program will scan the footage and look for your pet on the feeds.

Is “Search Party” Better than Alternatives?

While the idea of having your neighbors’ cameras scanning for your missing pet may sound helpful, the ad itself doesn’t offer particularly promising numbers. Despite opening with the statistic that “every year, 10 million [pets] go missing,” Ring says that “since launch, more than a dog a day has been reunited with their family.”

If you run the math on that (I’ll be generous and interpret “more than one a day” as 3 dogs a day), 3 dogs times 365 days in a year, divided by that 10 million missing number, gives us 0.0001095. Which means Ring’s new feature isn’t even close to finding even 1% of missing dogs. For “Search Party” to find just 1% of the 10 million missing dogs per year, it would have to find 274 a day, every single day. Surely missing posters, microchips, and asking your neighbors for help are at least as effective (if not more, considering anyone passing by can see your missing dog poster, not just those with Ring cameras).

Additionally, there’s no guarantee that the Ring AI feature highlighted in the ad is accurate. We’ve seen gen AI mess up all kinds of details in images, and the ad doesn’t explain how it’s AI can differentiate between your golden lab and your neighbor’s. You might get lucky if your dog has unique markings, but many breeds of dog with a solid coat can look quite similar from afar.

Why This Technology Could Be Dangerous

In addition to being ineffective, this technology is more insidious than it may seem at first. When you can turn on your entire neighborhood’s cameras with just a couple of clicks of a button, and can do so without asking your neighbors’ permission first, you might start to wonder just how much privacy any of us really has. If it’s this easy to look for a missing dog, it’s probably very easy to use this technology for more nefarious purposes under the guise of safety. All of a sudden, stalkers and abusers have tech that can help them find and hurt their victims much more easily.

Technology like this also feeds into a very negative mentality around the people in your neighborhood. Most of us are familiar with the old adage, “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” When you set up an extensive surveillance network like this, it’s very easy to slip into the mindset that anyone you don’t immediately recognize is a bad guy looking for an opening. Instead of getting to know your neighbors and looking out for each other the old-fashioned way, you’re almost encouraged to isolate and let the cameras do all that for you. Constant surveillance does not foster community.

What Are My Alternatives?

There are plenty of better ways to find your missing pet than relying on Ring’s AI-enhanced “search party” feature. To start, make sure your furry friends are micro-chipped and that you’ve updated the information. If they get scooped up by the local shelter, you’ll get a call.

Second, get to know your neighbors. Being part of a true community means you’ll have plenty of people ready to help look for your missing pet. They may even recognize your pet before you have a chance to ask for help. And if your critters know your neighbors, they’ll be more likely to let the neighbors catch them and bring them home.

Work on training your pets and, where possible, familiarize them with the neighborhood. Your cats should stay indoors as much as possible, for their own safety and the safety of the local ecosystem. Your dogs should be good about obeying your recall commands, and if they know the neighborhood they’re more likely to be able to find their way home on their own if they do get out.

You can even use some of the technology you already own. Many people clip AirTags to their pets’ collars so that if the critters do get you, you can see their live location and find them immediately.

In a time where AI companies are trying to sell you a product that will make decisions for you, create for you, and even have human interactions for you, it’s important to remember that these are the kinds of things that make us human. Just because you had to watch the Ring “Search Party” with AI ad doesn’t mean you have to opt into this service.

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