Announcing AI-Powered Deterrence: Redefining What Alarms Can Do
Max Shen
Senior Manager of Product Marketing
Deterring crime before it happens is one of the toughest challenges in security. Traditional alarm systems don’t react until a break-in has already occurred, while on-site guards are often cost-prohibitive and cannot be everywhere at once. With Verkada Alarms, we’ve taken a different approach that uses our AI-powered cameras and talk-down speakers to detect and deter intruders before an alarm is even raised.
Today, we’re making site protection even more proactive, flexible, and autonomous with AI-powered deterrence. Instead of a single robotic message, you can now trigger a sequence of realistic AI-generated messages that can incorporate scene context and escalate over time if the person remains.
Furthermore, organizations can set up a continuous workflow that begins with AI-powered deterrence upon detecting a person and only raises an alarm if they don’t leave after repeated warnings. This allows organizations to deter unwanted activity in areas with expected foot traffic without getting notified every time someone passes by.
Deter Crime While Minimizing Disturbances
With AI-powered deterrence, organizations can protect open areas after hours without causing unnecessary disturbances. For example, a car dealership could deter catalytic converter thieves without raising the alarm on every person that enters the lot, as most individuals may leave after the initial warnings.
Example workflow
Person detected → User-prescribed message
This is private property. Please come back during business hours.
If loitering continues → AI-generated message
Hey you - the guy with the tank top and backpack, you can’t be here at this time. Leave now before our alarms go off.
If loitering continues → AI-generated message
This is your final warning, if you don’t leave now, I’ll have to take immediate action.
If loitering continues → Alarm raised
Activate siren/strobe, live agent talk down, call contact list, dispatch police
Similarly, a business could deter people from sleeping on their property, a school could ward off people trying to spray paint graffiti, and a construction company could drive away trespassers – all without raising the alarm unless every attempt at deterrence fails. If the situation does escalate to an alarm, monitoring agents can perform video verification and execute the configured response, such as calling the contact list or immediately dispatching police.
Flexible Use Cases
Organizations can combine deterrence and alarm triggers in different ways to meet their needs. Here are three common use cases:
Deter prolonged loitering
Draw the same region for both the deterrence and alarm triggers, but trigger deterrence immediately upon person detection and trigger an alarm upon 2 minutes of loitering.
Deter intrusion
Set up a deterrence region on an exterior camera and an alarm region on an interior camera.
Protect outdoor assets
Draw an alarm region around the asset and draw the deterrence region in the area surrounding the alarm region.
Get Started
AI-powered deterrence will be available for beta in New Alarms on November 13th. To learn how to set up AI-powered deterrence, please refer to this article.
Interested in Verkada Alarms? Contact your Verkada sales representative or email [email protected] for a personalized demo or quote.
