I tried Wyze Cam's new AI-Fueled Video Search feature — here's what happened

Wyze just released a new AI-Fueled Video Search feature for its best home security cameras . This lets you quickly write out specific text prompts to find matching events within the app. That way, you don't have to manually sort through several timelines and thumbnails across each of your cameras to pull up the clips you're looking for.

AI-Fueled Video Search is a unique feature accessible only to Wyze Cam owners who subscribe to the company's Cam Unlimited subscription. This same plan unlocks other advanced features, such as facial recognition. I had the chance to play with the new feature for a bit before today's big rollout. Here's how it worked under this preview period.

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After updating my Wyze app to the latest version, a small magnifying glass button was added to the right-hand corner of my "Events" tab. Clicking this icon opens a search box where you can type vague or hyper-specific text descriptors. In my testing, I was able to search for "white dog" and "tall person" to instantly find clips of the offenders who set off the motion events, which you can see in the pictures below.

The more granular I got, the more the system struggled. While "white dog" accurately spotted my pet, the results missed some clips that featured the dog front and center earlier in the day. Wyze has stated the system can identify specific things such as "trash cans, garden tools, and even attributes like colors and shapes" — but that wasn't quite my experience. When I searched for clips of a "blue shirt," "stroller," or "garbage bag," the AI didn't find any matching footage.

The video search AI is powered by the company's own Wyze Vision Language Model, so I'll cut it some slack. It's an in-house solution built by a lean and independent team. I'm not expecting Google or Meta levels of accuracy, but it could use slightly more training before it's fully baked. With user submissions over time, this will better recognize more everyday objects like trash cans or tools. At the moment, it makes it easy to find people, animals, vehicles, or packages during specific times of the day rather than looking through thumbnails manually.

This feature does what it sets out to do — quickly monitor the things you care about. Just temper your expectations. Wyze used an example prompt, "Show me a delivery man with red roses," and I haven't found the system quite there yet in my time with it. But the prompt "Show me my dog in the backyard" works great.

AI-Fueled Video Search is going to run Wyze Cam owners $9.99 per month for the cost of the Cam Unlimited subscription. However, with advanced features like facial recognition and cloud storage for all of your budget Wyze Cams, this isn't a bad deal. Remember that if you're not enrolled in a Wyze subscription, notifications are limited by an artificial cooldown period, and you lose core AI detection that tells you if a subject is a person, package, or animal. This tool is an exciting first step for generative AI in home security cameras and we're excited to see how this will inspire competitors like Eufy and Ring going forward.

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