topic Re: Smart Notifications thinks birds are humans in Arlo Pro 2

Smart Notifications thinks birds are humans

Tinkypears — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:34:40 GMT

We enabled Smart notifications, but our back door keeps triggering because it thinks the birds (who live in a bird house fairly close to the camera) are people.... they are very clearly birds - they have bird heads - and make bird noises. We've had other cameras trigger with birds as people too, but this is definitely the one that does it the most. How do I train Arlo to know the difference between a bird and a person?

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Re: Smart Notifications thinks birds are humans

StephenB — Fri, 08 May 2026 17:22:54 GMT

@Tinkypears wrote:

We enabled Smart notifications, but our back door keeps triggering because it thinks the birds (who live in a bird house fairly close to the camera) are people

You might be confusing the triggering from the AI classification - they are not the same thing.

The camera triggers whenever the passive infrared (PIR) sensor in the camera detects motion. It isn't looking at the video at all. The video is then streamed to the Arlo Cloud, which classifies it (and then notifies you if smart detection is set for that classification). In your case, the AI is miss-classifying.

There are three approaches.

One is to reduce the motion sensitivity some, and see if that detects the birds less often. Try walking around in the area of interest, while running the motion detection test. Find the lowest value that detects you reliably, and see the actual threshold to something slightly higher.

If the birds are flying above the area of interest, you can also set up activity zones which will block both notifications and recordings when there is no motion in the area of interest.

You are assuming that the AI is classifying the birds as people. It might instead be misclassifying other stuff in the scene (including objectgs that are not moving). Try shifing around some of the stuff on the patio, and see if that changes the classifications.

Re: Smart Notifications thinks birds are humans

Tinkypears — Fri, 08 May 2026 17:41:20 GMT

I agree - it's the A/I misclassifying the birds. How do I get the Arlo A/I to be re-trained to recognize the birds, as birds, and not people? <-- That's the question I have.

For your last statement - Did you look at the pictures? It's 100% the birds - the notifications are coming in non-stop. It's not flying birds, it's birds that are close to the camera and that come in and out of the frame over and over again.

That's a great suggestion about changing the area of the activity zone - the birds are almost always in the bottom right hand of the frame - I'll go adjust that now, and see if that helps!

Re: Smart Notifications thinks birds are humans

StephenB — Fri, 08 May 2026 19:38:05 GMT

@Tinkypears wrote:

For your last statement - Did you look at the pictures? It's 100% the birds - the notifications are coming in non-stop. It's not flying birds, it's birds that are close to the camera and that come in and out of the frame over and over again.

No doubt that the birds are causing the triggers. And no doubt that the video is classified as including people.

But once again, that does not mean that the AI is classifying the birds in the video as people. It could be classifying something else in the scene. If it classifies anything as a person, that will take priority over the birds. We've sometimes seen a broom classified as a person, and I recall one case where a jacket left on a parked motorcycle was classified as a person.

The patio floor is a pretty complex scene, so I am thinking that there could be something there that the AI is struggling with.