Security cameras are great at telling you that something happened. The problem is that once you have several cameras around your home, they can become a little too enthusiastic about it.
Wyze thinks AI can help. The company has introduced Wyze Stories, a new feature that combines activity captured across multiple security cameras and presents it as a single social media-style feed.
Rather than receiving separate notifications as someone walks past the driveway camera, approaches the front door, and appears on another camera, Wyze AI attempts to understand that those clips are part of the same event. It then groups the footage together into one story and generates a written description explaining what happened.
For example, Wyze says a Story could tell you that a white FedEx truck delivered a large package while a small dog watched. You can then open the footage and tap through clips much like you would tap through Stories on a social media app.
To be clear, this does not mean Wyze is turning your security footage into an actual public social network. Wyze Stories does not publish your camera feeds for strangers to browse. The social media comparison refers to how private camera activity is organized and presented inside the Wyze app. Think Instagram Stories-style navigation, not an Instagram account for your house.
Behind that interface is an attempt to solve one of the more annoying parts of owning multiple security cameras: notification overload. Wyze says test groups experienced a 76 percent reduction in notifications when using Stories.
Wyze Stories assigns importance scores to events so the app can decide which activity deserves your immediate attention. Important events can receive larger thumbnails, push notifications, and more prominent placement. Less interesting activity can stay out of your notifications while remaining available in recorded footage.
Users can choose which Wyze cameras participate in Stories, which could be useful for cameras pointed at particularly busy areas. The interface also includes familiar gestures for skipping, pausing, and moving between Stories, along with an option to watch footage at 2x speed.
Of course, putting AI in charge of deciding which home security events deserve your attention raises some questions. An algorithm ignoring repetitive movement sounds great when it gets the decision right. It becomes considerably less useful if the AI decides that the one event you needed to see was unimportant.
There is also the privacy consideration that comes with having AI analyze security camera footage closely enough to identify activity, connect recordings from different cameras, and generate descriptions of what happened. The footage may not be public, but customers still have to be comfortable with this level of automated analysis taking place.
Wyze Stories is not included with every Wyze camera purchase. The feature requires the Cam Unlimited Pro subscription, which costs $19.99 per month. The plan also includes AI video search, 60 days of cloud storage, 24/7 emergency dispatch, and support for unlimited Wyze cameras.
Most Wyze cameras support Stories, although Wyze Cam v1, Wyze Doorbell v1, and Wyze Cam Outdoor v1 and v2 are excluded.
The social media presentation might initially sound gimmicky, but the underlying idea makes sense. A house with several cameras does not really produce several unrelated streams of activity. It produces events that may happen to move through the view of several cameras.
If Wyze AI can reliably connect those moments without filtering out something important, Stories could make a multi-camera security system considerably less annoying to use. Whether that convenience is worth $19.99 per month and handing more interpretation of what happens around your home over to AI is another question.
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