London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Saturday, Jul 19, 2025

Amazon's controversial vision for the future of your home security

Amazon's controversial vision for the future of your home security

Amazon's vision for the future of home security includes drones flying over your roof, outdoor cameras that monitor for possible trespassers and cute robots patrolling indoors.

During an invite-only press conference on Tuesday, the company showed off an autonomous, 20-pound dog-like robot named Astro with large, cartoon-y eyes on its tablet face and a cup holder. The robot -- not unlike an Alexa on wheels -- uses voice-recognition software, cameras, artificial intelligence, mapping technology and voice- and face-recognition sensors as it zooms from room to room, capturing live video and learning your habits.

Amazon also announced a subscription service called Virtual Security Guard for Ring cameras. Ring, the smart doorbell and camera company it acquired in 2018 for $1 billion, will work with third-party professional monitoring companies, such as Rapid Response, to analyze a live feed from its outdoor cameras.

The agents can use the camera's two-way talk functionality to communicate with visitors and activate the camera's siren or send emergency services as needed. (Ring already sells a $250 drone called Always Home Cam with an attached camera that can automatically fly around your house and stream video to your smartphone.)

For Amazon, these products offer the promise of taking a piece of the lucrative home security market and also pushing customers deeper into its ecosystem of household products. Other tech companies have stepped into this market over the years, including Google with its Nest Aware video recording system and Nest smart doorbell. Companies such as Logitech, Arlo and Netamo offer similar products.

But Amazon's decision to expand its offerings in this product category comes at a time of widespread scrutiny of the power and data privacy practices of the tech industry's biggest players. And Amazon's latest eyebrow-raising security products, with their potential for greater surveillance in and around our homes, may test just how much further companies can push consumers' comfort levels with such intrusive technology.

"Tech companies once promised a future like Star Trek, but Amazon is trying to sell us RoboCops," said Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and a fellow at the New York University School of Law. "And while these products promise safety, they're really a threat. These sensors would give us a disturbing new reality where it's impossible to escape the tech giant's roving drones within our own home."

It's a seemingly bold move for Amazon as its reach and power have drawn scrutiny from regulators around the world. Amazon has elicited privacy concerns before with its smart home devices. In 2019, for example, a Bloomberg report revealed Amazon employed a global team that transcribed Alexa's voice commands on Echo devices captured after the wake word was detected to help improve Alexa's grasp of human speech. (Amazon later said people could opt out of Amazon using their voice recordings.)

Privacy advocates also slammed a 2019 move by Ring to give law enforcement easier access to videos recorded on its doorbells for active investigations. (Since June, police and fire departments may only request information or videos related to an active investigation through public posts called Requests for Assistance.)

Shortly after Tuesday's event, leaked internal documents published by Motherboard revealed concerns raised by Astro's development team around the safety and privacy of the Astro robot, with one person who worked on the project reportedly calling it "a privacy nightmare that is an indictment of our society." An Amazon representative pushed back at characterizations in the report in response to Motherboard and noted Astro makes use of on-device
processing for tasks such as recognizing individuals.

Following the publication of this article, Amazon told CNN Business privacy is fundamental to its products' design. "We only collect information needed to provide and improve our customers' experience. When we collect data, we secure it and use it responsibly to improve the experience, while providing customers with transparency and control over their information," a spokesperson said.

How Amazon is trying to get inside customers' homes


Amazon kicked off its presence in our homes in 2014 with the Echo speaker, which became a hit for the company. Amazon has since crammed its Alexa virtual assistant into every kind of device imaginable, effectively acclimating its users to the possibility of the company listening to them all the time in exchange for greater utility. Now, its latest products are basically pitching that on steroids.

"Clearly we are moving into different territory now with the arrival of more experimental products such as the Always Home mini-drone camera and the Astro robot, but I believe that Amazon is using their products to learn more about consumers' willingness to have such devices in their homes," said Ben Wood, chief analyst at market research firm CCS Insight. Wood also said some consumers are willing to accept tradeoffs around privacy for the feeling of reassurance and security that products from companies like Amazon provide.

Amazon appears to be taking steps to make that tradeoff feel less severe.

A Ring spokesperson told CNN Business any agent monitoring a stream from its Virtual Security Guard service cannot access saved recordings, or download or store any videos, and customers will know what events were viewed by an agent. Customers can also set up privacy zones that are off limits for agents, but this may be small comfort to visitors and random passersby who are still caught on camera.

On the Astro product page, Amazon notes the robot's microphones, cameras and sensors will be disconnected when powered off. When Astro is recording, a light will turn green and it can be programmed to avoid certain areas of the house. In addition, images of faces can be deleted and anything that's sent to the cloud will be encrypted. Astro does create a map of the home based on where the robot explores, but the company said that data, which is sent to the cloud, does not contain actual images or streamed video.

Then there's the appearance. Amazon has dressed up surveillance technology as an adorable companion watch dog, making it much more appealing for customers, according to Jonathan Collins, a director at market research firm ABI Research. "Cute-ness is subjective but certainly the more emotionally invested someone is with a device -- and that can be driven by pleasurable visual or audio exchanges -- the more it is likely to be used," he said.

In a YouTube video posted by the company this week, Amazon developers said they took inspiration for Astro from science fiction movies and cartoons. They also noted it was important to include eyes on the robot and give it a personality, so it can better connect with users.

Other tech companies have tried to gain traction with home robots, including Softbank's Pepper, Anki's Vector robots and Samsung's Ballie, the latter of which would allow users to watch pets, family members or check in on things around the house when away. But Ballie was never commercialized and the others never caught on.

Astro, however, builds on the company's strength in robots, artificial intelligence, computer vision, sensor technology, voice interactions and edge computing, Wood said. Coupled with Amazon's reach and scale, this launch is far more notable, he added.

Amazon's Astro robot


"With an introductory price of $1000 and a small number of units available to a limited audience I believe the Astro robot will sell out in minutes when it becomes available in the US market," Wood said. (It ultimately will cost $1,500 after an invitation-only purchasing period.)

If Astro succeeds, it may be just the start. According to previous ABI Research projections, about 79 million homes globally will have a robot in the house by 2024. And one of the selling points for these robots will almost certainly be home security features.

In the YouTube video, Charlie Tritschler, a vice president of product for Amazon, said the idea for Astro came after a senior leadership meeting when someone asked if anyone in the room thought people wouldn't have robots in the home in next five to 10 years. "Everyone said, 'Yeah, we are.' So we said, 'Let's get started," he said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
South African Police Minister Suspended Amid Organised Crime Allegations
Nvidia CEO Claims Chinese Military Reluctance to Use US AI Technology
Hong Kong Advances Digital Asset Strategy to Address Economic Challenges
Australia Rules Out Pre‑commitment of Troops, Reinforces Defence Posture Amid US‑China Tensions
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
U.S. Resumes Deportations to Third Countries After Supreme Court Ruling
Excavation Begins at Site of Mass Grave for Children at Former Irish Institution
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
EU Delays Retaliatory Tariffs Amid New U.S. Threats on Imports
Trump Defends Attorney General Pam Bondi Amid Epstein Memo Backlash
Renault Shares Drop as CEO Luca de Meo Announces Departure Amid Reports of Move to Kering
Senior Aides for King Charles and Prince Harry Hold Secret Peace Summit
Anti‑Semitism ‘Normalised’ in Middle‑Class Britain, Says Commission Co‑Chair
King Charles Meets David Beckham at Chelsea Flower Show
If the Department is Really About Justice: Ghislaine Maxwell Should Be Freed Now
NYC Candidate Zohran Mamdani’s ‘Antifada’ Remarks Spark National Debate on Political Language and Economic Policy
President Trump Visits Flood-Ravaged Texas, Praises Community Strength and First Responders
From Mystery to Meltdown, Crisis Within the Trump Administration: Epstein Files Ignite A Deepening Rift at the Highest Levels of Government Reveals Chaos, Leaks, and Growing MAGA Backlash
Trump Slams Putin Over War Death Toll, Teases Major Russia Announcement
Reparations argument crushed
Rainmaker CEO Says Cloud Seeding Paused Before Deadly Texas Floods
×