Ring's camera drone will ship without manual controls after CBS crash

Ring has confirmed that its upcoming home security camera drone, due in January, will offer no manual piloting at all. Every flight will run through an onboard "AI Pilot" that follows pre-programmed patrol routes and navigates around obstacles on its own — a decision that lands just weeks after the drone crashed twice during a televised demonstration.

What happened on CBS Mornings?

The segment, broadcast on CBS Mornings and republished on Threads, shows Ring founder Jamie Siminoff handing early manual controls to CBS technology reporter Jo Ling Kent through a mobile app. When she asks, "Can I control it?", Siminoff replies: "Yeah, so we can load manual controls."

Then things go wrong. The drone crashes twice while under manual control. For the first crash, Ring told CBS News that the drone's collision-avoidance technology malfunctioned, and the company declined to share the onboard footage recorded before impact. The second crash played out on camera: the drone flew straight into a wall after failing to respond to manual inputs.

Siminoff's explanation pointed to the network, not the controls. The drone depends on internet connectivity even for autonomous flight, and that link dropped mid-demo. "If it loses connectivity, it's supposed to stop and land," Siminoff said in the video. "It did not there." So the safety fallback itself failed in front of a national audience.

Why no manual mode at launch?

When The Verge requested its own demonstration, Ring declined to show the app and said the product works only on pre-programmed flight paths. That phrasing matters. It suggests manual controls existed at some stage of development — as the CBS demo proves — but won't reach customers when the Drone Cam ships in January.

Ring spokesperson Sam McGee framed the removal as a design choice rather than a retreat. "We explored a lot of features throughout the development, but autonomous flight to patrol points using the AI Pilot is the best customer benefit and experience," McGee said in a statement.

What questions remain open?

Ring did not answer when asked directly whether the decision to drop manual controls followed the CBS incident. That gap leaves two readings available: either the company had already settled on full autonomy and the demo was a privileged peek behind the curtain, or a pair of televised crashes settled the question for good.

The incident also highlights a dependency worth watching. A drone that must maintain an internet connection to fly, and that is supposed to stop and land when the connection drops, has a single obvious failure mode — one that appeared on live television. Whether the shipping firmware handles connectivity loss more gracefully than the prototype did is something buyers will only learn once the January launch arrives and independent reviewers get units in hand.