AI helps Surprise man reunite with his missing dog

AI tech helps Arizona man find his lost dog

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now being used to help people find missing pets, and that technology helped one Valley man reunite with his dog. FOX 10's Nicole Krasean has more.

SURPRISE, Ariz. - AI is now being used to help people find missing pets, and one success story involves a dog owner in Surprise.

"Lainey is a special dog," said owner Kurt Leichtentritt.

Local perspective:

Leichtentritt says Lainey is very smart, and maybe even too smart at times.

Recently, Leichtentritt let Lainey out early in the morning into his fenced-in backyard, only to find the yard empty minutes later.

"I called for her, went out back and then realized that the garbage can was knocked over and she had jumped the fence," Leichtentritt said.

Leichtentritt says he posted about her going missing. He also utilized the Search Party function on his Ring security camera.

Dig deeper:

 Ring's founder and chief inventor, Jamie Siminoff, explains how the AI-based Search Party technology works.

"We take that picture, we put it into the AI, it then looks for that specific dog and if we find it on your house, it’s like, 'Nicole, this dog, the picture, looks like this dog in front of your house. Do you want to contact your neighbor?'" Siminoff said.

Leichtentritt says the use of the technology took a day, and resulted in a happy ending.

"It was terrifying, just those hours. So having extra eyes, extra people being able to see and notify us when they saw her, really helped," Leichtentritt said.

Why you should care:

Siminoff says people can turn off the Search Party function through Ring, but there are privacy safeguards in place.

"If you don't wanna take part, I mean I don't think you're a good person, but you can just say no and no one will ever know," Siminoff said.

Leichtentritt says as a veteran who thinks a lot about privacy, he understands concerns, but he believes any pet owner will be grateful this tool exists.

"Feeling the terror of losing her, wanting any additional help, that concern went right out the window," Leichtentritt said.

Siminoff says they are working on an expansion for Search Party to include cats. He says the leap to search for missing people isn't out of the question, but privacy would be an even bigger topic if that were the case.