After the Jewish holidays, the school year in Israel will resume in full swing, and hundreds of thousands of infants and toddlers, from birth to age three, will return to daycare centers and private kindergartens. For many parents, that brings anxiety: What happens when the door closes? Are their children safe from abuse, neglect or inappropriate treatment?
The Knesset's decision to permit live cameras in daycare centers was meant to reassure parents. Now, an innovative AI development is expected to boost participation among daycare operators. BabyEye allows parents to view live footage of their children, but with a futuristic twist that seems straight out of a science fiction movie.
The system's artificial intelligence automatically blurs out staff members and other children, so that only the parent's own child is visible. This means staff members don't feel constantly watched, while the privacy of other children remains protected.
The developers describe it as a pioneering system with far-reaching potential. The AI technology can analyze a child's movements and behavior to determine whether they are feeling well, drowsy, or weak, and can even track developmental progress according to age. These advanced features, however, are not yet available to parents or clients.
According to co-founder Matanel Shalom, "The services we provide comply with the regulations of each country where BabyEye operates, and some features are unavailable in Israel due to local privacy laws."
The project's leading partners are CEO and founder Alex Zeitel; Matanel Shalom, who owns an investment house responsible for business development; and Iris Granot, who runs an academy that trains parents and early-childhood educators.
The system, still completing its development phase, connects to existing cameras already required by Israel's "Camera Law." Parents can upload a photo of their child or crop one from a video, and the system uses facial recognition to isolate the child. Parents then access the live feed through a secure mobile app, where only their child appears in focus inside a "bubble," while the rest of the frame is blurred. The original recordings remain stored by the daycare center, but the blurred footage is not saved. The service costs between $7–$9 per child per month, paid by the daycare for a user license.
CEO and founder Alex Zeitel said, "Many daycares avoid giving parents full camera access due to privacy concerns. Our system ensures each parent can see only what they're authorized to see. The cameras are already in place; our AI simply manages what is visible. The system is already operating, and we're working on multi-room tracking. In the future, we plan to add access for grandparents, app notifications, and daily summaries – there's a lot of potential here."
According to Iris Granot, owner of an academy for training parents and educational staff who works closely with children and families, most educators are excellent, but one of the biggest challenges in recent years is that parents don't know what happens in the daycare, and past incidents of violence have created distrust. On the other hand, she said, when staff members feel they're being suspected, they can't function properly.
"The introduction of live cameras also creates tension because staff feel they're being watched all the time, and parents worry that others might see their children or analyze their behavior," she said. "Today, everyone is suspicious of everything, but I believe that once people understand this system enables both supervision and privacy, both daycares and parents will embrace it."
Shalom concluded, "This solution will come both from parental demand and from daycare centers seeking to offer security and transparency. We already have a significant number of daycares signed up. When Alex presented the vision, I saw his passion and determination to address a real social need. BabyEye was built innovatively and boldly, harnessing AI technology to redefine relationships between parents, children and educators. For me, joining this venture is a mission and a commitment to realizing it as a game-changer in the relationship between parents, children and educators.
