Paint It Black
The home panopticon is approaching, and apparently it’ll be able to detect people with AI, scream at them, and then shoot them with either paintballs or teargas.
Known as “PaintCam Eve” — or EVA, depending on which part of the website run by the Slovenia-based OZ-IT’s startup you’re checking out — this autonomous camera is a “vigilant guardian that doesn’t sleep, blink, or miss a beat.”
According to its website, the autonomous camera has three levels of fanciness — Eve, Eve+, and Eve Pro — that progressively allow users to turn their cameras on and off, detect animals, and at its most powerful detect faces.
In a very strange promo video narrated, seemingly, by a female voice pretending to be the camera itself, OZ-IT boasts that its Paintcam is “equipped with an integrated paintball launcher” — which, of course, is another term for “paintball gun” that also, it seems, can shoot teargas too.
“You are identified as a non-authorized personnel,” the camera is heard shouting at a grinning would-be robber in the video. “You have five seconds to leave the property.”
Don’t Shoot
Along with live monitoring and “customizable alerts,” which makes it sound like you can program the camera to say whatever you want it to say, the website also boasts that if intruders don’t go away upon initial warning, it can shoot them with its “paintball and teargas activation” capabilities.
“If an unknown face appears next to someone known — perhaps your daughter’s new boyfriend — PaintCam defers to your instructions,” the site boasts. “It’s security on your terms, even if your kids don’t always follow them [sic].”
Currently, it’s unclear when Eve/EVA will be released or how much it will cost, though as the website teases, OZ-IT will be launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund it on April 23. How retro!
As with every other piece of increasingly creepy and intrusive home security tech, we have lots of questions. What if, for instance, a militant bird lover buys a Paintcam and decides to gas their neighbors’ cats when they come a-hunting? And what if racists looking for an excuse to shoot at minorities use this kind of technology?
Most importantly, however, we’re dying to know: who the hell asked for this?
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