Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs

Ring’s controversial, AI-powered “Search Party” feature isn’t intended to always be limited only to dogs, the company’s founder, Jamie Siminoff, told Ring employees in an internal email obtained by 404 Media. 

In October, Ring launched Search Party, an on-by-default feature that links together Ring cameras in a neighborhood and uses AI to search for specific lost dogs, essentially creating a networked, automated surveillance system. The feature got some attention at the time, but faced extreme backlash after Ring and Siminoff promoted Search Party during a Super Bowl ad. 404 Media obtained an email that Siminoff sent to all Ring employees in early October, soon after the feature’s launch, which said the feature was introduced “first for finding dogs,” but that it or features like it would be expanded to “zero out crime in neighborhoods.”

“This is by far the most innovation that we have launched in the history of Ring. And it is not only the quantity, but quality,” Siminoff wrote. “I believe that the foundation we created with Search Party, first for finding dogs, will end up becoming one of the most important pieces of tech and innovation to truly unlock the impact of our mission. You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods. So many things to do to get there but for the first time ever we have the chance to fully complete what we started.”

“It is exciting to be back to Day 1, we are going to have to work hard and leverage everything we can, especially AI,” he continued. “Thanks again to everyone who came together to make this week happen and I can’t wait to show everyone else all the exciting things we are building over the years to come!”

As we wrote last week, Siminoff made Ring popular by signing partnership deals with police departments around the country. The company briefly stepped away from those partnerships after Siminoff left the company in 2023, but when he returned last year, he immediately refocused on Ring’s potential role in law enforcement. After the Super Bowl commercial, the company’s Search Party feature was criticized as dystopian and demonstrating functionality that could be easily expanded beyond looking for lost dogs. Although it doesn’t say what Search Party may specifically expand into, Siminoff’s email noting that the feature is “first for finding dogs” suggests the plan is to use Ring to scan for other things. In recent weeks, Ring has also launched a feature called “Familiar Faces,” which uses facial recognition to identify specific friends and family members on a person’s camera. The company also released “Fire Watch,” which uses AI to warn users about fires.

404 Media also obtained two earlier emails Siminoff sent to all Ring employees, about how Ring could have potentially been used to help find Charlie Kirk’s killer, and about the company’s “Community Requests” feature. Ring launched that feature in September and it allows police to ask Ring camera owners for footage about a specific incident. Community Requests is a feature that leverages the company’s partnership with the police tech company Axon. Ring had a similar planned partnership with surveillance company Flock, but the two companies canceled that partnership following widespread criticism.

“Community requests are a foundational piece of what we do here towards our mission of making neighborhoods safer. I’m excited to see our to see [sic] the results of our public agencies using this tool and the impact it will have on our communities,” Siminoff wrote on September 4. “Also, if in your perusing of social media and other sites, you see something that you feel is not correctly, or even intentionally miss-representing [sic] the community request feature please ping me with a link so we can respond.” 

Siminoff replied all to his own email the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated: “Yesterday was a very sad day. I was really just sad on so many levels,” he wrote. Siminoff sent employees this Instagram Reel about the Kirk investigation, then said “it just shows how important the community request tool will be as we fully roll it out. It is so important to create the conduit for public service agencies to efficiently work with our neighbors. Time and information matters in these situations and I am proud that we are working to build the systems to help make our neighborhoods safer.” 

In an emailed statement, a Ring spokesperson said “We’re focused on giving camera owners meaningful context about critical events in their neighborhoods—like a lost pet or nearby fire—so they can decide whether and how to help their community. For example, Search Party helps camera owners identify potential lost dogs using detection technology built specifically for that purpose; it does not process human biometrics or track people. Fire Watch alerts owners to nearby fire activity. Community Requests notify neighbors when local public safety agencies ask the community for assistance. Across these features, sharing has always been the camera owner’s choice. Ring provides relevant context about when sharing may be helpful—but the decision remains firmly in the customer’s hands, not ours.”