Latest news with #Victor Thane

WIRED

This Company Promises to End Your Home Security Fears… Forever

An exclusive first look at The Guild's revolutionary home security assistant. Victor Thane, The Guild's CTO entered the sun-dappled foyer of the warm modern home that he shares with his family: all blonde wood and creamy marble. Next to him was a quadrupedal robot, its LEDs shifting from green to a glowing orange, clearly noting my arrival. Thane reached out to shake my hand. 'Stand down,' he instructed the security bot. It dropped to its haunches with a chime of acknowledgement. 'Paw?' said Thane, gesturing that I should greet the robot. Another friendly chime and the robot's titanium paw (or rather, hoof) gently came to rest in my outstretched hand. 'Good dog.' 'In ten years,' he said, finally fully addressing me, 'there will be one of these in every living room in the developed world.' That wasn't hard to believe, as the Guild's security and sensor tech is becoming deeply enmeshed in the fabric of our homes. While the Guild was founded in 1992 as a shipping and logistics company, new leadership pivoted the company to consumer electronics in 2002 focusing on civilian applications of military grade systems, where they immediately began cementing their image as the 'good guys' in the space, launching a series of useful connectivity and security devices. 'No matter where you live or what kind of home you live in , there's always something to worry about… something that nags at your subconscious,' Thane, who became CTO in 2019, told me. 'It's an innate, animalistic fear of the unknown inside all of us, and we're the only company with the mandate to vanquish that fear.' Consumer protection became the company's focus—so much so that a team of engineers famously got matching tattoos: red butterflies framed with the Latin phrase Una, Cras Non Timebimus ("Together, We Won't Fear Tomorrow") across their forearms. From ultrasecure mobile phones to internet-connected fire, carbon monoxide detectors, and home cameras, The Guild built its security bona fides by linking these devices to their smartphones via an end-to-end encrypted feed and setting bug hunting bounties, all in the name of fear-reduction. At the same time, their marketing team deployed an arsenal of pithy advertisements calling out competitor data breaches and subsequent trips to congressional hearings in ads and across social media. (In fact, the brand has just erected a series of billboards up and down the stretch of California highways 101 and 280 that funnel rival executives in and out of Silicon Valley with slogans like, 'Don't Be Evil, Be Protected' 'We're not owned by a tech billionaire. Are you? and 'You Don't Need More Friends, You Need More Security.') As you'd expect, The Guild has its skeptics. In 2018, the home security team gave local police access to doorbell camera feeds with homeowner consent. It was an unprecedented olive branch to local governments—and it was popular. Every day people were happy to hand over a livestream of their front yards for a break on their insurance rates. 'We didn't receive a whole lot of pushback from end users. A lot of the noise came from the tech press.' 'The real breakthrough came when we launched our Generative AI division in 2020,' Thane explained. 'It unlocked incredible features—automatic false alarm detection, lighting and arming automation, face detection, perimeter defense and target tracking—things that our users had been requesting for years.' When faced with questions regarding a whistleblower report about The Guild using AI to map intricate interior models of user homes from sensor data, Thane waves my concerns away with his signature enthusiasm, explaining, 'We're creating tech that people can trust. Sensors and algorithms that move us away from a future filled with uncertainty and fear, and into one we control and feel confident in.' He punctuates his statements by lightly rapping the table with his knuckles. Dressed in a crisp white t-shirt over faded lightwash jeans, he seemed part archetypal techno-optimist, part Gabriel come to Earth to deliver hope to humanity. 'The only way that works is if we're woven into the very fabric of every home in America.' 'Just take the disarray of our urban centers,' Thane continues. 'We were uniquely positioned to launch the next generation of home security products.' He gestured to the robot at ease at his feet: 'One that users can trust with their lives.' Their most ambitious security tool. A new breed of home security According to The Guild's marketing materials, D.A.W.G. (Deployable Autonomous Weaponized Groundcraft) was developed over five years by the company's skunkworks division. The small team of multidisciplinary engineers and product leaders leveraged the firm's vast portfolio of patents to develop an infinitely customizable home security product. By now, Thane's youngest child (whose name and age are being withheld out of respect to his family's wishes) had toddled into the room and began poking at the D.A.W.G.'s LiDAR sensor. 'This isn't a mechanized Doberman,' Thane said. 'D.A.W.G. is fully alert and outfitted to take on even the most serious threats. It's not a pet, but it is designed to integrate into consumer homes.' In fact, D.A.W.G. has more sensors than the self-driving taxis roaming some major cities: GPS, LiDAR, thermal imaging, deep neural network-powered AI, satellite connectivity for over-the-air updates, and a microwave emitter are all standard features, and yet it ignored the child. 'Your D.A.W.G. should fit your family's specific needs,' he continued, settling back into his chair. As he did so, the D.A.W.G.'s mini LiDAR spun up with the whir of an electric vehicle, and the junior Thane scurried off in a huff. 'This little guy is a model that we consider 'a family's best friend': friendlier than some of the 'pro' units, with a dialed down aggression matrix, but still fully capable of sentinel duties.' The Guild envisions these D.A.W.G.s to be deployed as everything from elementary school security to elder care and companions. VIPs with large estates or farmers with valuable livestock can option their D.A.W.G. to operate with zero audio feedback and available cloaking capabilities. 'That's for those who believe security should be experienced, not heard,' Thane winked. No matter how consumers outfit their new best friends/sentries, Thane assures me that the baseline programming is uniform across the releases. 'They're constantly on patrol, using proprietary, entirely unbiased AI-powered threat assessment schemas to understand a scenario and take appropriate action, dialing its response up or down based on premodeled frameworks.' Safeguarding the Future Pending final clearance from the relevant government institutions—'It's less the AI and 24/7 cameras, and more about the solid state batteries powering these guys,' Thane says—The Guild plans to roll D.A.W.G. out to consumers in the next few years, with a waitlist opening on August 19th of this year. Potential owners can demo D.A.W.G. at special branded showrooms by the 2026 holiday season, 'We're just so excited to see our creation out in the world, helping people with their anxiety,' Thane adds. 'We're talking to some governments in the Global South—places with a deep need for help—about onboarding D.A.W.G. to augment their security forces. This is something that we can build to change the world.' As Thane spoke, my gaze drifted out a window that framed his older children playing a game of catch in the lush garden where a handful of D.A.W.G.s patrolled the treelined clearing. The baseball, the victim of a wide toss, flew within a few feet of the D.A.W.G. It was obliterated midflight. Neat. Visit to learn more. The Guild is a fictional property of Activision. Trademark & Copyright 2025