Amazon’s latest update to its video doorbells introduces a facial-recognition tool called “Familiar Faces,” a feature designed to identify frequent visitors by name. The system allows homeowners to build a catalog of up to 50 labeled faces — including relatives, neighbors, delivery workers, or other regular guests — and receive personalized notifications when those individuals approach the camera. Instead of the usual alert that someone is at the door, users may see messages that specify exactly who is detected. The feature must be manually enabled and managed through the Ring app, where faces can be added, renamed, merged, or deleted, and where the company says all biometric data is encrypted and automatically clears unnamed faces after 30 days.
The launch, however, has ignited considerable backlash due to long-standing concerns about how Ring handles security and personal data. The company’s earlier partnerships with law enforcement, its history of granting officials access to user footage, and multiple incidents involving security lapses have amplified warnings from privacy advocates. Critics argue that integrating facial recognition into a device already tied to neighborhood-wide surveillance networks poses risks, especially given past issues involving employee access to customer videos and exposure of sensitive user information. Some lawmakers have urged the company to abandon the technology altogether, and privacy rules in several parts of the country prohibit the feature from launching locally. Although Amazon insists it does not use biometric information to train AI models and cannot track where an identified person appears across all Ring devices, civil liberties groups say the risks outweigh the benefits and are calling for stronger state oversight.