According to a new blog from OpenEye, we are currently living through the largest technological shift of human productivity in history: artificial intelligence (AI). AI isn’t just a new tool; it’s a fundamental change in how knowledge is distributed and, therefore, how work is accomplished.
This shift builds upon a history of innovation. It began with the printing press, which enabled the widespread physical distribution of static information (books, newspapers). Next came the internet, where information became dynamic, capable of changing instantly, and was delivered digitally. Now, we have Generative AI, which transforms the landscape again by allowing information to be generated and delivered simultaneously while also being hyper personalised, if needed.
AI is reshaping how organisations operate, not by increasing access to information, but by changing how insight is generated and applied. This shift is reaching every industry, including video surveillance, where expectations for awareness and responsiveness are rising. In this article, OpenEye examines how AI is impacting industries broadly, how those changes are influencing the video surveillance market, and how OpenEye is innovating with AI in a way that is ethical and future ready.
Why today’s AI shift is unique
A popular phrase right now is that AI is currently the smartest it has ever been, yet the dumbest it will ever be. The technology is rapidly innovating, as well as becoming less resource intensive. Compared to just two years ago, the cost of deploying AI capabilities has dropped by roughly 90%, dramatically lowering the barrier to moving AI from experimentation into everyday operations.
What distinguishes this moment is not just improvement, but compression. Capabilities that once unfolded over decades are now advancing in years or months, leaving less time for gradual adoption. The shift happening today is occurring far too rapidly to merely be a “future” conversation. AI is reshaping how products are built and how careers evolve. Over the next five years, the surveillance industry is likely to continue shifting to meet these advancing trends, changing the organisational processes we’re used to, and the roles responsible for these workflows.
Moving from video that records to intelligent surveillance that acts
The impact AI is having on the surveillance industry has undergone similar rapid development. AI has gone from simple Perceptive AI (the system seeing something) to Generative AI (systems that create and compare content) to Agentic AI (the system doing something requiring autonomy and reasoning) in just the past few years alone.
As security systems gain agentic capabilities to take digital and, perhaps in the future, even physical action, the defining question becomes less about what the system can see and more about what it is authorised to do. This elevates surveillance from a technical deployment to an operational design challenge, one that requires clear escalation paths, accountability, and trust in how decisions are made.
What this means practically is that video security systems are moving from “video that records” to “intelligence that acts,” turning surveillance into a source of measurable business value and giving organisations better operational insights from their video security system. This achieves a greater return on investment, as surveillance is no longer limited to a reactive security tool, but instead a proactive solution capable of delivering actionable intelligence.
When equipped with an AI‑powered video surveillance platform, surveillance systems move beyond simple alerting to structured decision‑making.
Activity can be initially assessed at the perimeter using intelligent motion detection to identify only the events that warrant attention. For lower‑risk activity, the system can respond immediately through automated active deterrence, such as activating white light or delivering a pre‑recorded audio message, often resolving the situation before human involvement is required.
Only when activity persists or meets defined escalation criteria is the event routed to a command centre or security team for review and response. By filtering and addressing routine incidents automatically, organisations reduce unnecessary escalations, shorten response times for true priority events, and lower the operational cost of security without compromising protection.
The Look Back: From recording to intelligence
2025 was a pivotal year in video security. When an event occurs, the question shifted from “Did you record it?” to, “What action did our solution take?” As AI delivers timely insight in other parts of the organisation, delays in awareness become more visible, and less acceptable. Video systems are increasingly judged not by what they capture, but by how effectively they reduce uncertainty in the moment it matters.
This transition exposed a clear divide between legacy systems and AI-native, hybrid architectures that balance the heavy lifting of edge processing with the global scale of the cloud.
OpenEye met this shift by moving beyond basic detection toward individual and situational awareness, streamlining its platform to prioritise “time-to-insight” and ensuring its software is as adaptable to future AI agents as it is to the company’s users today.
Here, OpenEye examines how AI has evolved over the past year, where the surveillance industry currently stands, and how the company has evolved alongside AI.
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