Thats right this chat-gpt assisted security camera is only 35 dollars and has some pretty interesting features. It’s important to note that the camera is not actually powered by Chat GPT.
“We do not use ChatGPT. We leverage GPT algorithms and advanced multimodal AI empowered by VLM (Visual Language Model). This technology enhances the synergy between image and text, enabling our product, ViewSayTM, to excel in various tasks such as generating descriptive text from images (image-to-text) and conducting image searches based on textual queries, similar to the capabilities found in ChatGPT-4V.”
What does it mean!?
This basically means they have trained their own AI model to perform some specific tasks. Such as being able to detect up to two thousand different objects. Of course, object detection isn’t new in the surveillance industry. Companies like Dahua have been doing this for a while now. But what makes this camera unique is its blend of visual object detection algorithm with a language model. This allows the camera to send notifications that can describe in detail what is happening in the image.
Why is this unique?
Well most security cameras these days can send push notifications to your phone for things like motion detection or human, vehicle etc. But anyone who has ever used one of these features knows that these notifications don’t tell you much about what is happening. So, you click the notification to go to the app to watch the video recording only to find its your neighbor leaving for the 10th time today. What the Psync Camera Genie S brings to the table is the ability to get detailed text about what is happening in the scene. Take the image below for instance.
You might get a push notification that says “two kids playing with dog on living room floor, or you might also get “dog with lamb in its mouth on living room floor”
But seriously we have to expect that weird descriptions are going to happen. Honestly, I am looking forward to seeing some of the YouTube Shorts of the hilarious push notification descriptions that might come out of this. And when you consider that the camera uses a 2k 16:9 portrait format you can see where this would be a great content capturing machine.
Influencers are likely to snatch some of these up in hopes of reducing production time and increasing video content available to share. The ability to easily search your recorded footage could help reduce hours of reviewing footage to find that one time you sneezed, and milk came out of your nose. well maybe not that specific but you get the idea. You also have ability to share live feeds with others through an expiring link which opens opportunities for uh, “private sessions” if you know what I mean *wink wink nudge nudge*.
Okay let’s change the subject after that uncomfortable thought. Let’s talk camera specs. As already motioned the camera sensor captures 2k resolution. at a 16:9 aspect ratio. What I didn’t mention was that it only captures video at 20 frames per second. Which is 4 frames short of realtime.
This means that fast movements may result in some motion blur especially in low light situations. The camera will likely begin increasing the length of the shutter speed which will only make the problem worse. That is likely why Psynclabs included an nice bright LED light. The light intensity can be controlled through the app and will help ensure that your video is properly exposed to get the best image quality.
The camera also has Pan Tilt and Zoom capabilities that can be controlled through the app. Unfortunately, it does not appear that you can tell the camera to move through voice commands. But you can use tracking to track a person, animal or object.
The camera does have a built-in microphone and speaker for two-way audio. But the audio is adequate at best. You could have a quick conversation with someone like a delivery person or your dog but I wouldn’t be making any voice calls with it.
A plus for this camera is that it stores footage locally and comes in a3 2gb and 64gb version. With the 64gb version being $4 more. I like locally stored footage better than cloud storage and its nice that you don’t have to also pay a cloud storage fee.
Now you knew a $35 camera with these kinds of features had to come with a catch. And it does but not a horrible one. To gain access to the GPT style features you have to pay a *drum roll*… 99 cents per month subscription fee. Which is pretty reasonable for the upfront savings.
overall, this is a pretty solid value camera for what you’re getting. That is if you need or want these types of features. Again, I can see the Genie S providing some easily accessible content generation for creators. but these types of consumer devices often leave you wanting. Which is fine if you are just getting in to security camers its a low risk investment. And is sure to provide some entertainment. But as so often is the case with us humans we always want more better faster harder.
