Is your doorbell using AI to spy on you?

so many decisions in the air I raised today.

From the BBC, this is the interface. The show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. I'm Thomas Germain, a tech columnist at the BBC who covers how we use technology and how technology uses us. I'm Karen Howe, investigative reporter covering all things AI.

And I'm Nikki Wolf, I do the weird internet subculture and national security stuff. Today on the interface, we will be discussing. Is your doorbell spying on you and your neighbors?

“Why the US TikTok take over matters even if you don't use the app?”

And the beef that launched chat GPT. So who cut the Super Bowl on Sunday? I can't. Not I. The only Brit in this recording is the only one who watched the Super Bowl, I guess, for

the football. Yeah. I had a friend come over for dinner and I was like, oh, we should watch something. Like, what do you want to put on? He's like, oh, the Super Bowl is right now I'd completely forgotten it.

Which makes me feel like I'm not a real American, not a real American. Are you guys like big fans of the ads? What is this time? There's one ad in particular that we want to talk about now, right? Yeah. And it got people very wild up because of what it implied.

And that ad was by ring the doorbell company loads and loads of people I know use it. I'm sure that's the same for you guys. It's very useful, you know, someone rings the doorbell, you have an app on your phone. You can see who stood outside, what they announced during the Super Bowl ad was a new feature that they've been soft rolling out for a little while called search party.

The announced it for lost dogs. They were like, we have already saved 99 missing dogs because someone, someone, someone his dog runs away, you can hit the app and it will turn on everyone's ring door cameras and look around for the lost dog. I like finding lost dogs, I mean, that sounds nice.

But it also means that your camera is part of this giant surveillance network.

“A lot of people totally freaked out about this, right?”

Yeah. And I think belly rightly so. I mean, we live in an era where surveillance, mass surveillance and law enforcement overreach. If we can very diplomatically put it like that, is top of the news.

I saw this ad to, and I feel like the thing that was, there were two things that made this ad, I think, really bad for the company, like the first one is that they talked about how this search party feature has successfully found 99 dogs in 90 days of operation.

There are 10 million lost dogs in the world, so it's like not even a good functioning

product. Oh, that's pretty good, that's literally a 0.005% success rate, like 99 dogs, that's more than no dogs. You gotta, I like that. That's true.

That's true.

“But the problem number two is that, I think the visuals of the ad, I think that's why”

it's set off alarm base for everyone because they literally showed all of the homes suddenly lighting up and scanning the streets with blue light to find a dog. And in a moment right now, where so much of the U.S. has ice on the top of their minds and all the things that have been happening with confrontations between ice and citizens. Immigration and customs and force.

Yeah, this is why the ad has gone instantly viral in the wrong direction for the company, like so many hundreds of thousands, millions of people now are talking about how they

never knew that this was a possibility.

They had no idea and they want to immediately opt out of the future or ditch the product. And what a lot of people described it as a Trojan horse, who could object to lost dogs. But the functionality of this, the potential for this to be used for other things. Even if we say that the U.S. government will be absolutely above board with us and we already know that the U.S. government has successfully requested and received Green Camer footage.

You know, this can you're trusting every government and a massive tech company here. And that is a huge leap of faith that I don't think tech companies have really earned. And ring in particular, these aren't like hypothetical concerns, like sharing, ring Camer footage with law enforcement for a long time, like, was the point.

encouraged them to distribute them in neighborhoods, specifically as a tool to set up police

surveillance.

“In fact, they had the system set up where police could create, bring accounts and they”

could get access to camera footage from people's houses without a warrant. They could just request it from the company and they would hand it right over it. This caused a big controversy. There were cases where people were like they didn't realize that they were handing over like their home security footage to police departments and they shut that feature off.

But there's all kinds of other concerns right there was this big federal trade commission. But I think a lot of people who pay really close attention to ring saw this ad and we're

like, yeah, duh, what did you think this was?

There's this giant tech company that has all of these cameras all over the United States and all over the world. And yeah, they are in control of that footage. It's stored on their servers. And like you were saying, this search party feature that for now is just about finding

lost dogs is on automatically.

“If you don't want to participate, you have to go, this is a huge point of turn off.”

They've opted you in. It's worth saying as well. The reason why I think people were so freaked out is because of the ice stuff that's happening right now. And just as you were saying, Tom, that ring has a history of giving data to law enforcement.

I also has a history of trying to use different types of technology platforms like this one to engage in more surveillance. Like there was this scene that for a for media published that actually documented a bunch of the different tech apps and tech platforms that ice has used, including ones that they have partnerships with like with Palantir, where Palantir is developing this immigration

OS platform that's integrating all this data into a from different government agencies to track immigrants, but also from tech companies that they don't actually have official partnerships with. So the four of four zine talks about flock, which is the this network of cameras that do automated license recognition in the US and what four four found was that ice will

ask local police departments that have access to flock to do searches at the behest of ice. So think about like flock is 80,000 cameras and it's specifically license plate recognition. Like ring is millions and millions and millions more cameras. This is the largest private camera network in the world and that just completely expands

to a different scale, the level of visibility that a law enforcement agency like ice could have if they wanted it. Palantir, of course, is a tech company founded by the billionaire Peter Teele that does a lot of data processing for the US government and the military and now ice operations and customs and force. And the UK government just signed a huge just a few months ago signed

a huge deal with Palantir. So they're also working in security here. I mean, Palantir is literally named for the scrying device that Sauron uses in the Lord of the Rings. I mean, it would not be more these tech companies are not subtle, but if you name yourself

“after literally the ultimate evil and one of the the largest stories, I think it, I mean,”

help us help you guys Silicon Valley. Now ring in their defense says they have like really robust security practices. We also aren't here to say like ring is evil. This is bad. No one should use it. It's it's a personal choice. So we did get in touch with ring and they got back to us with a response. It says that right now this particular feature is such party can only recognize dogs. They said they do have an optional feature called

familiar faces that does use human facial recognition. They said that video sharing is never

automatic and you can with search party share by choice to share the video with the dog owner. They also said that ring has no partnership with ice, but they did say that they do hand over data to law enforcement, but only when they're legally required to do so. Yeah, I mean, those are pretty robust protections, right? But I think what a lot of critics are concerned about and also like what a lot of people who saw this ad are worried about is like it shows

you like the potential of this technology and the kinds of things it could be used for if the company, you know, changes its policies or changes its strategies at some point in the future. The in fairness is that these are very useful. My my dad who's disabled has a I don't think it's ring, but another similar camera installed in his flat so that his camera can always check in and make sure that he hasn't had a full make sure that he's safe loads of people

feel like this makes them safer. But, you know, there's a trade-off that people are making.

of your house and your family. That's that's an absolutely realistic possibility and outcome

“of using these products. But there is a trade-off, which is giving up control over, you know,”

what is happening on your own property. Sometimes inside your own house and it opens you up to potential consequences in the future. I mean, you can think about people talk about your data, you know, maybe no one's doing anything bad with it right now, but the fact that it exists means that someday in the future it can be used for a purpose that you don't like or you're not comfortable with. Yeah. And it is possible to say, I can I can see the

argument that this is worth it for the chance of saving a life even for the chance of finding

your dog, right? But that's the question that we're being asked and because it's opt out rather

than opt in, that's not even the question we're being asked. And in terms of questions being answered for you, let's say you're not comfortable with having a ring camera. If your neighbor across the street puts one on the door and it's pointed towards your house and you're filming, there's nothing you could do about that. So it's like other people are deciding. And I think this speaks to one of the key questions that surrounds all of tech, which is how much privacy

are you willing to sacrifice for convenience? Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things is like these companies kind of use the convenience to a road privacy, but they don't they don't actually have to do that, right? Like they could provide these features without also accessing the footage. So they kind of use the convenience doorway into being able to monetize off

“of really intimate data and intimate moments and people's lives. If you want to turn this off,”

it's very easy to do. If you have a ring camera, you open up the ring camera app, you go to the home page. There's like a little menu up at the top that you can click on and then you go to the control center and there should be a feature there called search party or it'll say something like opt-in to or opt-out of helping to find lost pets, which I mean, why would you want to do that? We all we love lost pets. So this is easy to turn off if you're not comfortable with it. There are

a whole bunch of other privacy settings that you can go switch off as well, which is something that I really think everyone should go look at. Like even if you're totally comfortable with ring, if you've got one of these things on the front of your house or inside your house, just go look at what privacy settings they offer you with and make sure you're comfortable with it.

A hundred percent. Yeah, we're fixated on ring here, but just think for a second about

all of the products in your house that are connected to the internet, all of them are collecting information. I know at Karen's house, it's like you're a lot, so it's just like a bunch of rocks and stones like nothing. Like I don't even know if you have Wi-Fi, but for the rest of us, there's even, I'm worried about this stuff and it's worth just putting in any effort that you can, you know, after you're done listening to this show, just check it out. See what's out there. It's

worth your time. I love that. I like surprisingly do not have a digital hygiene routine. So I feel like after this episode, I'm immediately going to post it here. Yeah, and look at my two technology objects in my house. You're like, like 2005, Nokia, Brick Cell phone. Yeah. And you're your advocates, you know. Yeah. So we've been talking about the power that all these technology companies

“have over our lives. And I think there's one in particular right now that perhaps like culturally”

in the the conversations we're all having that has more of an influence than any other. And that is TikTok. And it's a good moment to be talking about it because there was this huge transition. There's a TikTok takeover right where the company that owns TikTok, a Chinese company called Bite Dance, was forced to sell the U.S. operations of the app to a consortium of other companies in order to keep operating in the U.S. because of a bunch of laws that the government

passed over, you know, privacy and security and the national security concerns. So now, as of January 22nd, TikTok's U.S. version of the app is now owned by three different companies, including Oracle, which is a big data processing company owned by Larry Ellison, who's a, you know, major Trump donor and ally and a company called MGX, which is based in Abu Dhabi, which did a big crypto deal with the Trump family and then like another like investment firm. So what's been

happening on the app is absolute chaos over the past couple of weeks. And I know a lot of people, you know, hear this and they go, oh, TikTok, like whatever, I don't care about that. I think we've

there's, you still hear people go, though, that's where the kids are dancing. This matters to your

life, whether or not you use TikTok. You hate TikTok. You've never watched a TikTok video

“in your life. It still has a major influence over your life in your future. TikTok is, I think”

without a doubt, it's like the sun at the center of the solar system of the internet, right? It's, it's not the biggest app in the world's social media, not even close, but it has become like the locus of online digital culture. It's the place where conversation start and then baranch out into other parts of the internet and then leak into the real world. It's the cultural engine room right now. This is the most compelling explanation of TikTok that I've ever heard. Like, I personally

are talking about TikTok, but now I'm feeling coma. Yeah, it, it is a really, really important ecosystem. And what people are freaking out about now is the app is undergoing some major changes. So part of this deal that was struck among the big concerns is that the Chinese government might have control over the algorithm and they might like spread propaganda. There was this amazing hearing in the U.S. Senate where the CEO of bite dance. Well, that was the CEO of TikTok,

“not the CEO of bite dance. Oh, right. So that's the, but yeah, the, I think it was home-tellist.”

The Senate said it was like, have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party? And the guy's like, he was like, so I'm, I'm Singaporean. The guy's like, if you have a being a citizen of China, the guy's like, I'm Singaporean. Yeah. Yeah, it's really, really beautiful. But there is no reason to think that, I mean, may Tom, maybe you can correct me on this. But there's no reason to think that your data is less safe with TikTok,

then it is would say matter or Elon Musk's Twitter. There was never, we've been talking about

TikTok, freaking out about it for years. There has never been a single shred of actual evidence that has been produced, that anything untoward happened with the Chinese government and American TikTok data never. There hasn't been one shred of evidence. It's all been speculation about things

“that could go wrong. So these, this new set of companies took over, it's called the, the US joint”

venture is what TikTok is calling it. And part of their plan is that they were going to retrain the algorithm, like take the algorithm and start over from scratch and like build a new one. And in the first few days, like the first week after the app rolled out, things just went nuts. What do you mean by that? Like what happened? So it seemed to a lot of people, like there was censorship. So the TikTok account, the official account for the Democrats in the United States,

like usually their videos get like millions of views. All of a sudden, they were posting videos that were getting like zero views or like a couple of thousand. There were some examples, screenshots and online where people said like they were trying to send messages that had the word Epstein in them and they weren't getting sent. And also there was all this weird stuff like if you looked at the search page, it was suggesting all of this weird creepy stuff like it would suggest that

you search like don't look at that mirror in your house. Like just weird to stuff in the world. It turned out that what was happening was that there was this big snowstorm a couple of weeks ago across the United States. And according to TikTok, a data center had a power outage and the app was just going haywire because things weren't working. Then very quickly, like everything kind of went back to normal. But what we do know is the app is retraining the algorithm. They're going to shift

how it recommends videos, what it recommends and people are worried that these companies that now have control over this app have these ties to the Trump administration. And perhaps they could use this new power that they have to promote ideas that are beneficial to Trump or the American government or suppressed criticism. And it's worth saying that is precedent for this, right? This is people that people are not worried for no reason. This is exactly what did happen after Elon Musk

took over Twitter. It's that the algorithm started favoring things based on differing political. He opened and openly said that Twitter at the time was basically in that same position of being a cultural engine room. And it really changes conversation

off the app in a way that affects people's lives, even if you've never been on Twitter or TikTok.

Tom, to take a step back, when you said that they're retraining the algorithm, how is it actually working between all of these companies? Is Oracle the one that's going to be retraining the algorithm is the other company and have they said anything about why they're retraining the algorithm or what

agreement in the sale of the app is that they have to retrain the algorithm because the algorithm is intellectual property and bite dance the company that owns most of TikTok. They still have like a 20% share in this new company, the TikTok joint venture. So any concerns that you had about China, it's not like those have gone away. China still has major control over the app.

“I think it's like there's this new company called the TikTok joint venture and the company is doing it.”

So Oracle, the giant tech company that Larry Ellison owns is certainly involved in that process, but like you can just kind of feel that things are different on there. The videos that are getting recommended are just different and like the order of videos. Or whatever reason, they just have

Larry Ellison's face and every single one. So weird. I've never been on TikTok. I've seen things

that are TikToks because they come through Instagram rails. I think one of the things I want to do is join TikTok and sort of get an idea of how TikTok works and get a sense of it. If you're you're even on TikTok for a while like them. I've been, I'm a big TikTok user. I actually joined it because like I felt like, well, I'm writing about it. I have to be using this app in order to understand what's going on there and I really had to force myself to do it. I was like, this is so uncool.

I don't want to be used. And then like I got completely addicted to it. Like I have to force myself to put it down.

“But yeah, I'm a big TikTok user at this point. Would you be up for teaching me?”

Even you get me there. I think we have to. Yeah, you're not participating in the modern era if you're not on there. I mean, Karen, I don't know if we can get you involved. I feel like, I feel like this is a situation where Tom, you're the earthling and Nicky is an alien that's coming to earth. Well, and I am like the relative that's still on the other planet. And Nicky's just going to have to call home every once in a while and explain to me what's happening on earth.

Let's talk. Let's set you up with an account. I'll tell you how to make a video like what you can try and do to go viral and get people to pay attention. That can be like a nice project we're working out of the background. Stay tuned. Although, hang on. In UK, will I be getting the Ellison algorithm or the OG TikTok algorithm? Outside of the US, it's the same TikTok

it always was. It's connected to the US TikTok app so that the content is flowing back and forth.

But you, Nicky, if you set up, you're still getting that pure original, it's like classic coke, right? You're getting the original TikTok algorithm. But what I do want to talk about for a second is maybe why you shouldn't be worried. Like, there are real concerns what's going to happen with TikTok now, who's in control, what's going to happen to the algorithm. What we saw with Twitter, now called X, right, is that Elon Musk turned it into an ecosystem to

“promote his political agenda. Like he openly said that's what he was doing. And this was, it seems”

catastrophic for the app. They lost a ton of users. They lost a ton of advertising revenue. It seemed like this wasn't a great business decision. It certainly wasn't handled in a smooth way that didn't upset lots of people and push them off the app. I think with TikTok, there's like three different companies who are investing along with TikTok. I think that these people are more concerned about business and the TikTok app itself, making money. And I think they're very worried about upsetting

TikToks users and losing the cultural cashier and the force and the power of this app. We reached out to TikTok to ask them to comment. They declined. But certainly the company's position is that they are as concerned about protecting people's privacy and promoting free speech as they

ever have been. That's the company line. That's what it's always been. But in the time that follows

like the future of this app, people are going to be looking for examples of where things are going wrong, where it's either suppressing this kind of content. They're promoting this and I don't want them to. Is that happening? Because TikTok and its allies and people from the Trump administration are putting their thumbs on the scale, or it's just that people are making bad videos that no one wants to watch. You'll never know because the algorithm is a total mystery to the people who are

using the app. Okay. I need to talk to you guys about a different superblood. I know that we are ready to talk about one superblood, but there was another one that a lot of people were talking about, which was the anthropic ads. I love this. I think this is so funny. Yes, anthropic is an opening eye competitor. They make the top block club. And this is, and Domic basically made four different variations on an ad, where there's a user of a trap-out. And then there's a trap-out

trap-out. So one of the ads is like this guy who's trying to work out and he's struggling to work out. And he's like, can I get a six pack really quickly? And then the trap-out personified is like, take his personal trainer, right? Yes. Like, this is like really buff-dude standing next to him, who has this like dead panic expression, and then goes, "Perfect." That is a clear, well-established goal. Let's start with, and then whatever. And it goes through this whole thing. The trap-out then suddenly goes,

“"And you know what else you should do instead of working out? Have you considered getting these”

insoles that will make short, king-stand taller?" And like every single one of these ads, then has this tagline ads are coming to AI, but not Claude. I think for most people who saw this ad, it was probably just really funny because obviously opening-in, anthropic our competitors, and opening-in, I just announced that they are going to be rolling out ads to JGPT.

This was an attack ad, right? This was basically a sub-tweet back in the day when there was

sub-tweet, it's because opening-in is not explicit mentioned anywhere. There's just this reference that ads are coming. And of course, opening-in is the only company that's rolling out ads. This deeply triggered Sam Altman, CEO of opening-in, he tweets out this really long dramatic essay

“where he's like, "First of all, these ads were funny." Second of all, seriously dishonest. And”

he just insults anthropic with more and more intense insults as the essay goes on. So he says, "Enthropic serves an expensive product to rich people." And then he goes, "One authoritarian company won't get us there on their own to say nothing of the other obvious risks. It is a dark path." Yeah, I mean, we should talk about why OpenI was so freaked out about this Anthropic ads. Like the whole AI industry is in this super precarious position. And this like,

weird petty fight between the billionaires who own these different companies,

actually ultimately will have a direct effect on the experience that you're having on the internet.

It seems like, you know, just this high school drama, but this actually matters in some surprise. Yeah, 100%. So this literally is the beef of the century because this is the beef that launched CHATGPT. I don't know if you guys know the story. Basically, OpenI did not actually intend to launch CHATGPT as a product when they were in November of 2022. They were actually working on a totally different product, which was this super assistant. It was going to be like a

CHATGPT. But it was going to be built on GPT-4 and they were supposed to launch it in the spring of 2023. But in the fall of 2022, rumors started circulating within OpenI that Anthropic might launch a CHATGPT before them. And so the executives literally made a decision on the spot to accelerate the launch of the CHATGPT in two weeks' time using not GPT-4, which the entire company was working on. But using an older model, GPT 3.5, and just smacking on the user interface that they

were already developing for the launch in spring of 2023 onto this older model. And they message it to the entire company and also to the public as this is going to be a low key research preview. It's not going to be a real product. It's going to maybe have a small via a remote on the internet. They wanted specifically to get the data flywheel going so they wanted that virology to then generate a bunch of interests, get a lot of user data, and then use that

user data to train up and refine the real product launch GPT-4 that was going to happen later.

“And instead, like they pop this out and it just blows up and completely changes history, right?”

And the reason why OpenAI made that decision in that moment is also because of the history of Anthropics. So Anthropics was founded by a splinter group from OpenAI. Right. So this is personal. Yeah. In late 2020, Dario Amade, CEO of now Anthropics was actually

a executive at OpenAI, gathers up a bunch of his buddies who were in critical roles within OpenAI.

And they decide to leave to start this competitor because they fundamentally disagree with Sam

and did not believe that he would be capable of continuing to run the AI company well.

“This is like a multi year extremely personal of Anthropics that has literally shaped the entire”

trajectory of the AI industry and of people's lives around the world. And it is the beef that is still fueling so many decisions in the AI race today. That's the interesting thing, right? There's this moment that we're getting right now with AI that we haven't had in technology for a long time,

which is that there is actual competition, right? Most of these giant tech companies have these

monopolies, right? Google has a monopoly over search engines. Amazon, like that's where you go to buy things on the internet. There's all these companies that have their little thief dunes and nobody

“really competes with them and they can make their products worse and worse and or like in the”

pursuit of making more money and there's nothing you do about it. With AI, there's all these different companies that make a product that is kind of the same. Yes. So there's like this desperate competition to be the cool kid in high school and like Anthropics launching this ad that makes OpenAI look bad. Like that's a code like they're freaking out right now because you know in a month OpenAI's empire could collapse. Like I'm not saying that's going to happen,

but like everybody is right on the razor's edge right now. So we talked about how this beef had historical importance and actually launching tragedy, but it also is going to continue to affect your experience with these chaplots moving forward. Because for example, the New York Times reported last late last year that when OpenAI started seeing this this drop and its market share, the company internally declared a code orange to try and figure out how to get their

user numbers and their user engagement back up. And when OpenAI declared that code orange and when they were tinkering with the way that the model behaves, it had a direct effect on users like people are worried that the company is going to make the product more addictive and we have already seen the effect that that had earlier last year when OpenAI accidentally made the product more addictive and then it led to this entire new phenomenon of AI psychosis. So this beef and the

competition between all these companies is literally driving how hundreds of millions of people are going to be experiencing their AI product. And it's worth noting that it's like not just a beef between OpenAI and anthropic, like the CEOs of every single AI company has beef with one another. You think that this industry is primarily driven just by profit and business competition,

but actually a huge, huge component of the moves that these companies make and how it's ultimately

going to affect your experience on your phone is because these individuals hate each other. But so childish. And that's our show Join us next week. If you're in the UK, you can listen on BBC sounds or if you're outside the UK, you can listen wherever you get your podcast or just

“search for the Interface podcast on YouTube. If you want to get in touch with us over email,”

you can reach us at [email protected]