Introducing AI-Powered Alerts: Delivering the Latest in AI for Proactive Security and Operations

With the introduction of AI-powered search in May 2024, we helped customers reduce investigation times from hours or days to minutes or seconds. AI-powered search offers a unique and powerful tool for Verkada customers to search their footage using their own words in a freeform text bar–distinguishing Command as a highly-advanced management platform capable of solving important security and operational issues. Enabled through our hybrid cloud architecture–where video processing occurs both on our cameras as well as over backend data centers–our AI-powered search serves as another important example of how we’re always innovating on our products and features. Its introduction, though, marks only the beginning of our plans to incorporate Generative AI in our cameras’ analytics. Today, we’re introducing the next progression of these AI capabilities with AI-powered alerts–another prime example of Verkada delivering cutting-edge technology that supports quick investigations. 

What are AI-powered alerts?

The current alerting feature in Command supports proactive management of an organization’s premises. Our customers today can create dozens of alerts across Verkada products for notable events like a person or vehicle loitering in a specific area, a person tailgating in an office door, or a camera losing connectivity.

Now, with AI-powered alerts, customers can use everyday language in a freeform search bar to set up alerts on virtually any event of interest. That is, in addition to using AI-powered search to retrieve relevant footage from a freeform query, an alert can now be created for anytime the subject of a query is detected on a camera going forward. It is now possible, for example, to create an alert every time a camera detects a person not wearing a safety vest, or a UPS truck arriving with a shipment. The two images below for the query “person carrying crates and not wearing a safety vest” highlight the ease of creating an alert on nearly any attribute of a person or vehicle:

Figure 1: Search results for the query “person carrying crates and not wearing a safety vest” using AI-powered search.

Figure 2: Generating an alert for “person carrying crates and not wearing a safety vest” using AI-powered alerts.

Customers may want to understand how often a specific query will trigger a corresponding alert–and adjust the frequency accordingly to avoid too many alerts or, on the other hand, avoid missing a potentially valuable alert. When creating an AI-powered alert, it is now possible to see the estimated number of daily alerts one will receive for the given query based on historical data from the camera. One can then use the slider at the top to refine the sensitivity of results to either create a more "precise" interpretation of the query (resulting in fewer alerts), or a more broad interpretation (resulting in more alerts), as depicted below:

Figure 3: Moving the slider to the right towards “More Broad” will return more results and, therefore, more estimated daily alerts (in this case, the user will receive an estimated 271 alerts) for the query “person carrying crates and not wearing a safety vest.”

Figure 4: Moving the slider to the left towards “More Precise” improves the accuracy of search results and will result in fewer alerts (3 alerts in this example of “person carrying crates and not wearing a safety vest”).

Our AI-powered search user guide provides detailed step-by-step instructions on how to set up AI-powered alerts and optimize its use for one’s organization.

Industry-Specific Applications

Our customers have already used AI-powered search in a variety of ways to expedite investigations and improve operational efficiencies. AI-powered alerts add a proactive element to AI-powered search–allowing customers to be notified of the results of their queries as soon as their cameras detect the relevant results. Below we highlight a few industry-specific examples of how AI-powered alerts can benefit organizations:  

Logistics & Manufacturing

Customers in the logistics and manufacturing industries can leverage AI-powered alerts to gain important insights into workplace safety and better monitor when cargo or other materials enter and leave their facilities. Customers can create alerts for events like “person driving a forklift and not wearing a hardhat” to be notified when a workplace safety violation occurs. Logistics customers can, importantly, set an alert for “orange truck with white and blue letters at the north entrance” to be notified when a specific shipment arrives in a certain location.

Healthcare

Customers in the healthcare space can use AI-powered alerts for safety compliance and operational efficiency. Customers can, for instance, generate alerts for “person not wearing a medical mask” or “person wearing red scrubs in the south wing” to monitor compliance with hospital rules.

Retail

Retailers can use AI-powered alerts to notify authorities to the presence of suspicious individuals or vehicles–mitigating theft and shrinkage. Retailers can create granular alerts for “person with light hair and a green tattoo” or “white van with a broken headlight and tinted windows and an orange bumper sticker”–highly-detailed queries to pinpoint when known suspects who match certain criteria appear on cameras.    

Conclusion

With AI-powered search and AI-powered alerts, we continue to cement ourselves as the industry leader in video security analytics. Grounded in our hybrid cloud architecture, we’re offering unique technology leveraging the latest in Generative AI that accelerates investigations and provides operational insights. We approach our product development with a constantly-improving mindset, so our customers will continue to benefit from our in-house innovation for years to come.

Ready to learn more? 

Check out our user guide for more information on how to set up and optimize AI-powered alerts. AI-powered alerts will be available for customers beginning on October 3rd, 2024. To get a personalized demo or free trial, contact your Verkada sales representative or email [email protected].