Why Ring’s Super Bowl ad hits so sinister

A lost pooch. A heartbroken young girl. A parent stapling up “lost” posters. And then, an unlikely hero—a network of Ring security cameras—arrives to save the day.

That’s the 30-second elevator pitch for Ring’s big Super Bowl ad, which (if you look for it on YouTube) literally comes with the tagline, “Be a hero in your neighborhood.”

But for many Super Bowl viewers, the Ring add came across as dystopian rather than heart-tugging, as any number of TikTok videos and Reddit posts can attest.

The putative subject of the ad was Search Party, a relatively new Ring feature that helps owners of lost dogs find their pets by enlisting the help of nearby Ring owners.

Ring has previously spelled out how the feature works: The owner of a lost dog (who doesn’t necessarily need to be a Ring user) submits a photo and details of the pooch using the Ring app. That action triggers a “Search Party”: a group of nearby Ring cameras that use AI to try and spot the missing dog.

If a camera makes a match, the owner of the cam can choose (or choose not to, if they prefer) pass the information along to the pet’s owner.

That all sounds laudable on paper, not to mention great material for a Super Bowl ad. But some images in the commercial struck viewers as downright creepy, including animations showing dozens of Ring cameras scoping out the neighborhood, along with a jerky, superimposed “bounding box” that locks onto the missing dog.

Now, TikTokers and Redditors are furiously posting details on how to disable Search Party—which, as we’ve noted before, is an “opt-out” feature, meaning it’s activated on supported Ring cameras (outdoor only) by default.

Reached for comment, a Ring spokesperson said Search Party “does what neighbors have done for generations—help reunite lost dogs with their families—just with better technology.”

“We built the feature with strong privacy protections from the start and camera owners choose on a case-by-case basis whether they want to share videos with a pet owner to support a reunion,” the Ring rep added. “Since launch, Search Party has helped bring home more than a dog a day.”

The seeds for the current Search Party backlash were sown long ago with Ring’s on-again, off-again, and currently on-again partnerships with local law enforcement agencies. In particular, Ring’s Community Requests feature, which allows law enforcement officials to request video clips from Ring users, has repeatedly come under fire from privacy advocates, as have Ring’s dealings with Flock, a network of AI powered security cameras that have been used (among other things) to scan vehicle license plates.

Late fall, 404Media reported that a division of ICE had access to Flock’s camera network, and that story eventually led to a wave of TikTok videos urging Ring owners to smash their cameras.

In a previous statement, a Ring spokesperson flatly denied to me that ICE has gotten access to any Ring videos, noting that the Community Requests feature is limited to local law enforcement only.

Still, the controversy surrounding Community Requests—which, like Search Party, is an opt-out feature—has lingered, and in the aftermath of the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis, it’s unsurprising that the Super Bowl ad has triggered strong “nope” reactions from many viewers.

This article is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best security cameras. Updated to add a statement from Ring.