Securing tomorrow: Experts examine AI, video analytics trends for 2025

YARMOUTH, Maine — With developing technologies changing the shape of monitoring services, a panel of experts discussed the past and future of video analytics during a recent Security Insights webcast hosted by Security Systems News. 

But before you can move forward, it’s important to look back, as moderator and SSN Editor Cory Harris encouraged a panel of experts to share their highlights in 2024.  

“A lot of things have happened over the year, and it’s really exciting because what we’re seeing today is good competition in the industry and many, many companies coming out with different technologies,” said Tom Cook, executive vice president of sales and operations at Hanwha Vision. “I think we have to talk about where that is in the marketplace and basically caution some end users and consultants on how to use AI, how to spec AI, and what we should be looking for in our industry and where we should go with it.” 

Fredrik Nilsson, vice president, Americas, with Axis Communications, noted that, “No conversation can be had today without using the acronym AI. Everyone talks about AI, and it’s great because Axis has AI built in our name - which we’ve had for 40 years and are celebrating this year - so we’ve been prepared for this for a long time. Because we talked about analytics for such a long time and there are so many promises, I think with the deep learning capabilities at the edge that’s started coming out from our products and Tom’s products a couple years ago, we’re finally fulfilling that promise of analytics.” 

Given that it holds such a prominent place in developing technologies, Harris then asked the experts how they foresaw the role of AI in analytics evolving in video surveillance solutions. Kurt Takahashi, CEO of Netwatch Group, had some insights to share.  

“I think it’s amazing because, as a service provider, we’re having monitoring centers, which are consuming millions and millions of streams, and you have to find a way to intelligently sift out the noise. That’s been an issue for us and in the industry for as long as I can remember, but now it’s come to fruition where we’re able to sift out some of that noise: the rain, the moving trees, the cats and dogs, the spiders, the spider webs, the proliferation of noise. But the algorithms have gotten a lot stronger now, and because you can layer it at the edge, at the server, and in the cloud, it gives you so many different options to be smart about it.” 

Nilsson sees there being two challenges faced by integrators and end users in that respect, with the first being legacy installs bringing users up to modern standards in analytics and detection. The other challenge is the change in behaviors for end customers as well as integrators.  

“I’ve been in installations where they’ve had brand new systems and everything is working flawlessly, but they still have operators sitting with joysticks moving things around and checking it out even though you don’t have to use that today. I think we have to do a better job of educating those integrators and end customers that you need to change the behavior of how you spec and install, and how you use the systems compared to what it was on a five- or eight-year-old system to what is out there today.” 

You can find the full webcast online at  www.securitysystemsnews.com/webcasts.