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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Amazon has launched its new Familiar Faces feature.
- It lets Ring users save people’s faces to a library in the app.
- Critics argue it’s a dangerous violation of privacy.
Amazon has launched a new feature that enables Ring doorbell cameras to recognize and catalog faces of people using AI.
While the company is promoting the technology as a convenient way for homeowners to customize notifications and boost security, some are calling it a dangerous violation of privacy and a stepping stone to mass surveillance.
Introduced in September, the Familiar Faces feature is not turned on by default. But once Ring users opt in, it can automatically scan the faces of guests and passersby using facial-recognition technology, or FRT. FRT works by scanning your face and, with the help of AI, translating it into a unique patchwork of numbers, also known as a “faceprint.”
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While many tech companies have begun integrating the technology into products — it’s commonly used to unlock iPhones, for example — it’s drawn growing criticism from consumer advocacy groups, industry watchdogs, and lawmakers. Some experts are now arguing that Amazon’s new feature poses a particularly high risk, both due to the fact that it collects biometric data from anyone who’s within sight of a Ring camera and in light of Amazon’s previous partnerships with law enforcement agencies, including with Flock, a surveillance company that shares footage with ICE.
“Amazon’s system forces non-consenting bystanders into a biometric database without their knowledge or consent,” Massachusetts senator Edward Markey wrote in a public letter published in October. “This is an unacceptable privacy violation.”
Familiar Faces is now being rolled out to Ring users across the United States.
How it works
The new feature is ostensibly designed to make the Ring App more personalized. An AI algorithm scans faces picked up by the doorbell’s camera, and in the app, users will then have the option to label and save up to 50 of them in the Event History or Familiar Faces section. Adding a name to a person’s face will then cause the app to deliver a more specific notification: “Laura at front door,” for example, rather than “Person at front door.”
The technology is useful for “eliminating guesswork and making it effortless to find and review important moments involving specific familiar people across the Ring App experience,” Amazon wrote in its September announcement.
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In that announcement, however, the mention of the upcoming launch of Familiar Faces was somewhat buried; the main focus was the launch of a higher-resolution camera, as well as Search Party, another AI feature that helps homeowners and neighborhoods find lost pets. Search Party “reflects Ring’s vision of using AI not just to power individual devices, but to transform them into simple tools that make it easier for neighbors to look out for each other, and create safer, more connected communities,” Amazon wrote.
The pushback
Some experts, however, argue that Amazon’s deployment of its new AI-powered FRT will do anything but build safer communities.
“Today’s feature to recognize your friend at your front door can easily be repurposed tomorrow for mass surveillance,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit focused on digital privacy and free speech, wrote in a November blog post titled “The Legal Case Against Ring’s Face Recognition Feature.”
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According to the EFF, Amazon may retain a person’s biometric data for up to six months even if they’re not saved by a Ring user in the Familiar Faces library, though that data will not be used for algorithmic training purposes. Amazon did not immediately respond to ZDNET’s request for comment.
A Ring spokesperson told The Washington Post that the new feature will not be available in Texas or Illinois, both of which require companies to obtain permission before collecting biometric data, or in Portland, Oregon, which has laws in place restricting the use of FRT.
Should you use it?
As you’ve probably noticed, we’re very much in the midst of the “AI upgrade” era; every product and service that can be fused with some kind of AI probably will be, if it hasn’t already.
Some of these enhancements are genuinely useful; a chatbot that can help you find deals on flights, for example, or an agent that can manage your email inbox, can save time on what in the past were mundane and sometimes stressful tasks.
But every time you opt in to a new AI tool — or, as is sometimes the case, just start using it one day without providing explicit consent — you’re also agreeing to hand over more of your personal data to tech companies. This can lead to more targeted advertising, more addictive products, and sometimes, data breaches.
Anytime you use AI, ask yourself: Is this worth handing over more of my data? In the case of Ring’s new FRT technology, is the loss of privacy — for you and for the many more people that come to or just pass by your front door — worth the relatively small convenience boost resulting from notifications labeled with a person’s name?