My phone buzzes with a notification, catching me off-guard while I’m out in the backyard: Person detected, package detected. It’s my Google Nest Doorbell letting me know, via my iPhone’s lock screen, that someone’s dropped off a delivery (pet food and breakfast bars) at my front door.
A minute later, I get another alert: Package no longer seen. Uh-oh. A porch pirate already? That’s been a problem in my neighborhood lately. I pop open the app to check the video doorbell’s live view, but Google Home is already saving me the worry. It chimes with a reassuring message — Doorbell, front door — and the app shows a couple of friends who stopped by earlier than expected, waving at my doorbell camera and holding the package. I can hear them laughing through the two-way audio. Nothing to worry about.
The Nest doorbell isn’t just a passive window onto my porch. It knew what was there, and how to describe it, thanks to AI-powered object recognition. This is a far cry from headlines about generative AI enabling cheats and exploitation — or worse, mass layoffs.
In over 100 hours of testing AI-enabled home security features, and after years of personal use, I’ve often found these features to be a secret sauce that’s finally giving home security the edge it needs to fix long-standing problems like overwhelming alerts, confusing app management and notorious false alarms. Some worries about privacy linger, but the more I work with object detection and smart alerts, the more I feel like we’re getting something right.
Well before last month’s introduction of a chatty Gemini AI that saw and discussed multiple objects as someone moved around an office, Google was quietly training Nest algorithms to recognize the difference between a package and a person. Now you can find object detection and recognition on nearly every smart home cam, from Arlo’s 2K-resolution devices and Ring’s plentiful doorbells to Eufy, Lorex, Reolink, SimpliSafe and many more. We’ve opened our doors to a quiet AI revolution where people, amazingly, have few complaints.
I’ve been working in smart home tech for a decade now, and these days I review, among other things, AI-equipped products in my role as CNET’s home security editor. (When that notification buzzed, I was in the middle of setting up a backyard camera for my latest review.)
At my townhome in Bend, Oregon, the security setup can shift suddenly depending on what I’m testing — anything from a new SimpliSafe indoor sensor kit to the latest lever-based lock from Schlage — but I keep a few core items in play as my personal devices. That includes a video doorbell, a deadbolt smart lock and a backyard cam, plus a couple of smart displays for voice commands or other controls.
That setup is easy (each device takes around 30 to 60 minutes to install), works with Alexa or Google Home, and is simple to teach to family and friends. It also comes packed with a collection of the latest algorithms to detect and filter recognized objects.
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This tech is more affordable than it’s ever been. The cameras themselves are available well below $50 for those who want to save. Higher-end video doorbells are around $100 to $200, much lower than several years ago, while home security kits can start at a few hundred dollars. AI detection is either completely free or available as an add-on to services that charge $3 to $8 per month. This means we can recommend technology like this to people who wouldn’t have been able to afford it in years past.
“The smart security segment stands out for its consistent innovation and strong value proposition,” says Adam Wright, research manager and smart home specialist at market intelligence firm IDC. “AI-enabled cameras and video doorbells, in particular, have driven the continued growth and interest in smart security devices, thanks in part to a clear value proposition of safety, security and enhanced capabilities.”
While no devices are perfect, I do see potential: This technology is practical and easily customizable, with real-world benefits for our homes and families. I’m not dismissing potential issues with privacy or how companies manage customer data, but this home tech uses today’s AI training models with a light touch. If we must get used to artificial intelligence appearing everywhere, these applications show that it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Finding AI’s place in your home
We’re only now at the beginning of the generative AI revolution kicked off by ChatGPT in late 2022, which itself builds on several decades of behind-the-scenes developments across the broader landscape of artificial intelligence. The hype for gen AI has been nothing short of spectacular, but some people see a misplaced emphasis, something I’ve been calling the “laundry and dishes” effect.
“You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction,” the fantasy and sci-fi author Joanna Maciejewska wrote in a March tweet that quickly went viral. “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
Home security is winning that AI challenge. I don’t have a robot butler in the laundry room (it’s more of a laundry closet, really), but I do have an app that alerts me when a family member walks up the driveway and that doesn’t bother me with reports of every vehicle or jogger that passes the front yard — unless I want it to.
In many ways, home security algorithms are like the LLMs (large language models) used in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and other popular online AI. LLMs are made to take apart the details of language, objects or logic into data sets they can learn, then put it all back together to answer questions or create useful info. Over time and with careful training (along with massive amounts of data), these models grow more accurate, like when you take a test over and over, until they can reliably distinguish people from cars or pets, and even recognize individual faces. The devil in the details is how they’re used.
A few taps on a phone or tablet touchscreen, like from the Blink camera app, let me filter objects to get only notifications about animals in the backyard. Or I can block out all patio motion detection with a privacy screen, or adjust motion sensitivity if it’s triggered by every jogger on the sidewalk. With a bit of settings work, I can receive only the information I want about what’s happening in and around my home.
First-time users are often surprised by how far it’s all come. My friend Carl, using the Arlo app for his first video doorbell, was pleased by how well it paired with existing smart devices. He also noted how “crisp” the visuals were, another field that’s come a long way in recent years and enables that AI accuracy.
Such targeted setup and control is what security system brand SimpliSafe calls “proactive security,” and it had previously been limited to high-end commercial or “elite residential” applications. But now AI is bringing object recognition to our pockets — and you don’t even need a residential single-family house to use it. Plenty of indoor security cams, sensors and even peephole doorbells are made for renters