AI baby monitors are collecting years of sleep and breathing data

In short: Baby monitors like Nanit are moving from simple night watching to collecting and saving long term data about a child’s sleep, breathing motion, and behavior.

What's going on

Some newer baby monitors use a camera and software to track what a baby is doing in the crib. Nanit, for example, uses an HD camera mounted above the crib, plus computer vision (software that tries to understand what is happening in video), to spot sleep and wake periods and track movement over time.

Nanit can also track “breathing motion” using special clothing with a printed pattern that the camera watches for small up and down movements. The company says it can show breaths per minute and alert parents if breathing motion looks irregular or stops. It also tracks room temperature and humidity, and it can log events like when a parent approaches the crib.

The key shift is how long this information can stick around. Without a paid plan, the system mostly works as a live monitor with limited history. With subscriptions, parents can keep days of video clips and detailed reports, and if they keep paying and keep using the camera, that can turn into months or even years of stored patterns and summaries, like a growing diary of a child’s nights.

What to watch

These products are often marketed around safety, but Nanit says it is not a medical device and it is not meant to diagnose or prevent conditions like SIDS. Privacy is also a major concern, since video and health related data are sent to company servers in the cloud (computers run by the company, like a remote hard drive). Even if video is encrypted, the long term question is who controls this data later, and what happens if policies or ownership change.

Source: NYTimes