Artificial intelligence (AI) is all around us. We can’t escape it. It is now making it into the home security space with technologies that are changing the way we use things like video cameras and smart thermostats. But can we afford it?

It’s one thing to utilize an AI-based smart thermostat that can crunch data from sensors in your home and then adjust its own programming. It is another thing to install a device – like an AI-enabled camera – that needs to send data to the cloud for processing before returning some sort of function. That is where it all gets more expensive.

The challenge with AI is the amount of raw computing power and electricity it needs to function. Both computing resources and electricity are expensive. They will only get more expensive as AI permeates more of modern society. In the home security space, that likely means prices are going to rise on both equipment and services.

AI to Detect Fires

An example of where all of this is going can be found in research ongoing at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in New York. An engineering team at the school has developed an AI system capable of detecting fires in real time.

Consider this: their technology can analyze video footage from a standard camera faster than the blink of an eye. It can alert to a potential fire with just the slightest amount of smoke or flame to work with.

It all sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? But as an AI system, it consumes a lot of power. Analyzing video in real time at a speed faster than human blinking requires an unimaginable volume of computing resources.

The technology is not yet ready for commercial release. But when it is, it will not be cheap. Companies choosing to implement it will have to pass its costs on to the consumers. That is the way the free-market economy works.

Competing for Cost-Cutting Customers

But the other side of the coin is a renewed effort among home security and automation providers to compete for cost-cutting customers. It has become apparent that a certain segment of the population will not invest in home security until they believe prices are more reasonable.

Vivint Home Security recently entered the competition for such customers with a new product known as HomeProtect. In essence, HomeProtect offers property owners a reasonable entry-level home security system at a fair price, with or without professional monitoring.

The cost of the equipment straight up is competitively priced with other professionally installed and DIY systems. If a customer opts for a 3-year monitoring contract at a reasonable monthly subscription fee, the cost of the hardware is slashed considerably.

Affordability and AI Don’t Mix

Irrespective of Vivint’s decision to introduce HomeProtect, the reality of the matter remains unchanged: affordability and AI do not mix – at least not now. AI is expensive technology to implement. And as time goes on, it is likely to get more costly thanks to computer infrastructure struggling to keep up with the pace of AI development.

I suspect the home security industry’s implementation of AI will be modest and gradual. The top players will struggle to find a way to introduce AI capabilities but keep pricing manageable. What it eventually looks like remains to be seen.

For now, consumers can be fairly confident that their home security systems will see more AI functions in the future. It is really just a question of how much those functions are going to cost. They will not be cheap, that’s for sure.