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Swann’s AI-powered doorbell that replies to unwanted visitors

An Australian security company has developed what is believed to be the world’s first AI-powered doorbell that responds to unwanted visitors like a human would.

Swann has built an AI-powered doorbell that functions like a housekeeper.
Swann has built an AI-powered doorbell that functions like a housekeeper.

An Australian security camera maker has devised a way for its products to “act human”.

Swann, which has for 25 years manufactured home security devices out of a Port Melbourne warehouse, has built an AI door bell that can tell visitors to move along.

Its motivation was to move beyond simply recording crimes after the fact and actively prevent them occurring.

But the product can also be used to tell a delivery man to drop a parcel by the door or a doorknocking saleswoman “nope, not for me, don’t come again”.

“If I was to ask you how much would you pay for a video of an accident that you had, you might say $100. However, if I asked you how much would you pay to have avoided the accident, it would be $5000,” chief executive Alex Talevski said, explaining the concept behind the new AI-powered product called Homeshield.

Video doorbells which allow homeowners to remotely answer their door via wi-fi and interact with a visitor have been around for a long time. But Mr Talevski said they were not always effective.

Swann’s AI-powered doorbell sounds like someone’s home and responds to questions accordingly.
Swann’s AI-powered doorbell sounds like someone’s home and responds to questions accordingly.

“The concept is a perpetrator would knock on the door to see if there’s anyone home before they intruded. This whole industry was founded on the back of that,” he said.

“However, the facts are that 80 per cent of the time, you’re not answering that call from the video doorbell.”

Swann is banking on Homeshield, released next month, to do the answering for people. In a test of the product, seen by The Australian, it told one visitor that it “sounds like you might have the wrong address buddy. John doesn’t live here”.

In another, when a door knocker claimed there was a fire at the house, it responded in a man’s voice, “woah dude that’s serious better go get help from the neighbours right away”.

Homeshield offers 10 different voices which range from nice to aggressive. Aggressive is one setting people should use at night time, especially after midnight, Mr Talevski said.

Homeowners are able to rewatch incidents and can also see them live, opting to take over and speak anytime they like, Mr Talevski said.

Homeshield was introduced at the AWS Sydney Summit this week, as the US giant announced the availability of a new AI product which powers it. It’s called AWS Bedrock.

Swann chief executive Alex Talevski.
Swann chief executive Alex Talevski.

Mr Talevski said while Swann had been testing the product for some time, the company wasn’t comfortable launching it locally as it needed Bedrock to be in Australia to ensure data from the service wasn’t travelling offshore.

AWS vice-president of compute and networking services Dave Brown said Swann was one of several of AWS’ local customers across regulated industries such as finance, healthcare and education, which would seek to launch AI products using the new service.

While Bedrock had been available in other markets, regulated industries and those requiring zero latency – or lag time – needed the service to operate on local servers before they could build on it.

“When AI interacts with something that’s more machine to machine, then latency becomes much more important. So having Bedrock locally here in Sydney for customers in Australia is going to be critical,” Mr Brown said.

Bedrock is powered by AWS accelerator computers, several of which the company brought to Australia to power the service locally.

“If Bedrock is on the other side of the world, you’re adding about 300 milliseconds of latency with API calls. That’s a little bit too long of a response time,” he said.

“Having Bedrock locally means it’s now less than 10 milliseconds of latency and we live in a world that wants instant response to everything we do.”

An example of how Swann’s Homeshield service would respond.
An example of how Swann’s Homeshield service would respond.

For Swann, latency could be crucial when dealing with an intruder.

Mr Talevski said the service, for which it charges $12.99 a month, operates in two modes: either what the company calls “concierge” – activated when the doorbell is pressed – or via “defender” – which will activate without prompt when someone turns up at the home.

Joseph Lam
Joseph LamReporter

Joseph Lam is a technology and property reporter at The Australian. He joined the national daily in 2019 after he cut his teeth as a freelancer across publications in Australia, Hong Kong and Thailand.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/gadgets/swanns-aipowered-doorbell-that-replies-to-unwanted-visitors/news-story/250f2569b8dc521556aee75f7d2d1a0e