Ring’s new Search Party feature is on by default; should you opt out? That’s the question many Ring users are asking after Amazon’s smart home brand rolled out the tool this week. The feature automatically scans footage from nearby Ring outdoor cameras and doorbells to help track down lost dogs. Admirable? Absolutely. But the bigger concern is whether your video should be searched without you actively choosing it.

What Is Ring’s Search Party?

Search Party is designed to make it easier for pet owners to find their missing dogs. When someone posts a photo of a lost pet on Ring’s Neighbors app, they can launch a Search Party. Ring’s AI then scans nearby camera footage to look for a match.

If the AI spots a dog resembling the one in the missing post, the camera owner gets a notification. At that point, they can decide whether to share the clip or simply alert the pet owner through the app.

Why Ring Thinks It’s Helpful

According to Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, the idea is to cut out the “middleman.” Instead of waiting for neighbors to notice a missing pet alert, compare it to a picture, and then manually check their camera feeds, the AI does the work automatically.

“Your Ring AI assistant is looking for that dog and is going to tell you, ‘Look, this dog I saw looks like this dog that’s missing,’” Siminoff explained at Amazon’s latest event.

On paper, it’s an efficient use of AI that could reduce the time it takes to reunite pets with their families.

The Privacy Question: Should You Opt Out?

Here’s where things get tricky: Ring’s new Search Party feature is on by default. That means your camera footage could be analyzed in the background without you actively opting in.

While you’re still in control of whether to share detected clips, some users are uneasy with the idea of Ring scanning their footage automatically. For privacy-conscious homeowners, it raises questions about consent, data use, and whether more features like this could appear in the future.

What You Can Do

If you’re excited about helping neighbors find their pets, you may welcome this new feature. But if you’d rather keep control over when and how your footage is used, you may want to head into your Ring app settings to see whether you can adjust or opt out of Search Party.

For now, the tool is framed as a community-driven safety measure. Whether that balance between helpfulness and privacy holds up will depend on how Ring handles user transparency in the long run.