Ring’s Super Bowl LX ad was supposed to introduce a new feature that could potentially revolutionize how missing dogs are looked for: via AI-powered doorbell cameras.
However the new feature, titled ‘Search Party’, has instead been greeted with alarm, as some internet users label it “dystopian”. President and CEO of Amazon Andy Jassy calls it a “compelling” use of AI.
“Millions of dogs go missing in the U.S. every year — and options for finding them are often painfully limited. Our Ring team saw an opportunity to use our community and technology to help, so they built Search Party,” Jassy writes on X.
“When a pet owner posts about a lost dog in the Ring app, nearby participating outdoor Ring cameras in the neighborhood begin looking for potential matches. If yours spots what might be the missing dog, it lets you know. You see the photo alongside footage from your camera, then can choose to share the video with the pet’s owner.”
Jassy says that Search Party has found 99 dogs in just 90 days. While it is ostensibly a noble feature, commenters quickly soured on it. “Nice way to start a mass surveillance product and label it as dog rescue,” writes one person beneath Jassy’s post. “Ring offering to turn your neighborhood into an AI-fueled surveillance state under the guise of ‘helping you find your lost dog’ is CRAZY,” writes another.
Government: how can we get Americans to accept constant surveillance?
Ring: Puppies
Americans: PUPPIES!!!!!!
— mark david (@M___D____M_____) February 9, 2026
“Before Search Party, the best you could do was drive up and down the neighborhood, shouting your dog’s name in hopes of finding them,” says Ring’s founder Jamie Siminoff. “Now, pet owners can mobilize the whole community—and communities are empowered to help—to find lost pets more effectively than ever before. That’s why we believe it’s so important to make this feature available to anyone who shares a lost dog post in Neighbors.” Neighbors is a hyperlocal social networking app on Ring.
Back in October, Siminoff says he thinks AI will make Ring cameras even more effective at securing people’s homes, preventing crime, and generally making neighborhoods safer, better places to live.
Also among the Super Bowl LX ads: Oscar-nominated filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone for a memorable Squarespace commercial.
