TNW 425: Ring's Lost Dog Ad Was Never About Dogs - Ring's Super Bowl Commercial Backlash
Tech News Weekly (Audio)
Leo Laporte
4.0 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge joins Mikah Sargent this week! Amazon's Ring product had a Super Bowl ad that generated a lot of discussion and backlash following its debut. A look inside Lego's Smart Brick technology. And NASA's Perseverance rover completed its first-ever drive fully planned by AI.
- Jennifer talks about Amazon Ring's Super Bowl commercial that sparked a lot of backlash, which showcases its AI-powered Search Party feature, with concerns that it could be used as a means of a mass networked surveillance system.
- Mikah is fascinated by the dive into Lego's new Smart Brick technology.
- And Tariq Malik of Space.com and This Week in Space joins the show to talk about NASA's Perseverance rover, which completed its first drive planned by AI, and how the technology's use compares to a human-planned drive.
Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Guest: Tariq Malik
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on Tech News Weekly, thank goodness for Jennifer Patterson, Toohey of The Verge, |
| 0:04.6 | who gives us a lowdown of what's going on with Amazon's ring, that Super Bowl ad about |
| 0:10.4 | lost dogs, surveillance, and its partnership with flock. Then I talk about that Lego smart |
| 0:17.7 | brick because it turns out it took a long time to develop the technology. |
| 0:23.6 | Afterwards, Tarek Malik ofspace.com stops by to tell us about AI being used to drive a rover on Mars. |
| 0:34.6 | Podcasts you love. |
| 0:36.5 | From people you trust. |
| 0:39.0 | This is Twitter. |
| 0:42.7 | This is Tech News Weekly, episode 425, with Jennifer Patterson-Tooey and me, Micah Sargent, |
| 0:49.9 | recorded Thursday, February 19th, 2026. |
| 0:53.1 | Rings Lost Dog ad was never about dogs. |
| 0:57.4 | Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. |
| 1:03.7 | I am your host, Micah Sargent, and I am very excited because today I have the wonderful privilege of being joined by Jennifer |
| 1:13.1 | Patterson, Tui of The Verge. |
| 1:14.9 | Welcome back, Jen. |
| 1:15.9 | Hello, Micah. |
| 1:16.9 | Happy to be here, as always. |
| 1:19.4 | Always a pleasure to get to chat with you. |
| 1:20.9 | And boy, do we have a lot to talk about because the superb owl happened. |
| 1:28.9 | And during that, there were some advertisements, as there always are. |
| 1:35.9 | And there's now been a lot of confusion, questions. |
| 1:40.0 | I recently had to sort of explain what was going on to someone because they had these devices. |
... |
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