Smart home company Wyze is experimenting with an unconventional method of providing customers with artificial intelligence-driven people detection for its smart security cameras – a business model that pays for what it wants. On Monday, the company said it would provide the feature for free, after it had to disable it due to an abrupt end to its licensing agreement with Seattle-based company Xnor.ai, which Apple acquired in November last year. .
AI-powered people detection uses machine learning models to train an algorithm to differentiate between the movement of an inanimate object or animal and that of a human. It is now a staple in the smart security camera market, but as a result it requires a lot of resources and is expensive. It is more expensive than Wyze realized, in fact. That’s a problem after the company promised last year that when its own version of the feature was fully baked, it would be available for free without requiring a monthly subscription, as many of its competitors do.
Wooo boy. Wyze learning some difficult lessons. The free people detection promised in November 2019 when Apple acquired https://t.co/mNBGgEK3ph is too expensive to be free now that it’s in the cloud. They will attempt voluntary payments from their clients https://t.co/8TSTq5FKrs
– Jimmy Hawkins (@ prjct92eh2) July 20, 2020
Now, however, Wyze says he’s going to try a pay-as-you-go model in hopes that he can use customer generosity to cover his monthly cloud costs. This is how the company spread the good (and bad) news in its email to customers eligible for the promotion, which includes those who were enjoying detecting people on Wyze cameras until the Xnor.ai contract expired. :
“In the past few months, we have had this service in beta testing, and we are pleased to report that the tests are going really well. People detection is meeting our high expectations and will only continue to improve over time. That is the good news.
The bad news is that it is very expensive to run and the costs are recurring. We greatly underestimated the monthly cloud costs when we started working on this project last year (we have also hired a real finance guy …). The reality is that we won’t be able to absorb these costs and stay in business. “
But Wyze says that while it would normally charge a subscription for a software service that involves recurring monthly costs, it promised 1.3 million of its customers that it would offer the feature for free, even if it required the company to pay for the expensive cloud-based processing. . “We are going to keep our promise. But we’re also going to ask for your help, ”writes Wyze.
It seems risky, and Wyze admits that the plan may not work:
When People Detection For 12-Second Event Videos officially starts, you’ll be able to name your price. You can select $ 0 and use it for free. Or you can make monthly contributions in whatever amount you consider worthwhile to help us cover our recurring costs in the cloud. We will re-evaluate this method in a few months. If the model works, we can consider implementing it for all users and even extending it to other Wyze services.
If Wyze can recoup its costs trusting customers’ goodwill, it could prepare the company to test more experimental pricing models. After all, radical pricing strategies and good enough quality is the way Wyze became a pioneer in the smart home camera industry, and could work for them again if customers feel the function works so well that it justifies adding a few dollars a month.
