What AI Watchdog sees
Updated
AI Watchdog is what lets Stealward tell you “someone is reaching toward your bag” instead of just “motion.” It watches your belongings, not just movement.
Turning it on
The AI Watchdog tile on the Protect screen starts off. Before it runs for the first time, Stealward shows you what it does and asks your permission, because watching the scene means sending occasional still frames from the session camera to a third-party AI platform for analysis. Nothing is sent until you allow it.
If you decline, everything else still works. You can arm as usual, and you can turn AI Watchdog on later from the same tile. Your choice is shared across your devices, so you don’t have to repeat it on each one.
AI Watchdog availability depends on your plan. If your plan doesn’t include it, tapping the tile tells you so, and you can still arm without it. See plans and pricing.
How it works
While a session is active, the watching device keeps an eye on the scene through its camera and works out whether your belongings are safe — whether someone is reaching toward them, or whether something has been moved or taken. When it sees a possible threat, Stealward turns that into a plain-language alert on your other device.
Open the session on the device you kept with you and you can see what AI Watchdog is protecting and when it last checked. If it’s watching the wrong thing — say you moved something yourself and want that to be the new normal — you can point it at a different photo from the session, and it treats that as the scene from then on.
What happens to those photos
The photos from a session are used only while that session is active, for the sole purpose of watching your belongings. When the session ends, every one of them is encrypted so that afterward only your own devices can open it. The AI platform is set to zero data retention: it never stores your frames, and never trains on them.
If you turn on help improve detection — it’s off by default — an encrypted copy is also available to us, only to review and improve detection. You can turn it off at any time. We do not use these photos for advertising or profiling, and we do not sell them. The Privacy Policy has the full picture.
Your recorded video and audio stay end-to-end encrypted throughout — AI Watchdog’s analysis does not change that. Only your own devices can play back a recording.
What it can’t do
AI Watchdog only knows what the camera can see. Its job is to understand the scene in front of it and flag threats to your belongings while you’re away, so give it a clear, steady view of the things you want watched. If the view gets blocked or the scene goes dark, your belongings are no longer visible — and that is itself something it will tell you about.