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Bengaluru techie fires cook earning ₹4,800 after AI catches her stealing fruit
A Bengaluru-based tech professional has revealed that he used an AI monitor to keep an eye on his cook, whom he suspected of stealing fruits
A Bengaluru-based tech professional has revealed that he used an AI monitor to keep an eye on his cook, whom he suspected of stealing fruits from the refrigerator. Pankaj Tanwar’s hunch proved right when the AI monitor — whom he calls his “AI roommate” — filmed his cook stealing apples, blueberries and a banana on at least three separate occasions.
In a post shared on the social media platform X, the Bengaluru techie said he had fired his cook for stealing. HT.com has reached out to him for a comment and this copy will be updated on receiving a response.
Bengaluru techie fires cook for stealing fruit
Tanwar revealed that he fired his cook after his AI roommate caught her swiping fruit “red handed”.
“My cook was stealing fruits from my fridge so I deployed my AI roommate in the kitchen and it caught her red handed,” said Tanwar, a serial innovator who regularly shares his tech projects on social media. “I caught her twice this week. Just fired her,” he added. (Also read: Bengaluru techie turns helmet into AI-powered police device to flag traffic violations: 'Ride safe or regret it')
Tanwar’s “AI roommate” appears to be a surveillance camera with an AI chatbot. He said that the AI monitors the kitchen while the cook is working and pings him the moment she “takes anything”.
A screenshot of his exchange with the AI chatbot shows that it not only kept track of the fruits she took for herself but also how often she washed her hands before cooking, how thoroughly she cleaned the kitchen, and how long she took to cook.
AI reports cook’s activities
Tanwar shared a screenshot of his conversation with the AI as well as his setup — a surveillance camera placed on top of a cupboard.
https://x.com/the2ndfloorguy/status/2028045991832690828
The conversation shows that his AI roommate caught the cook stealing a few apples and a banana, as well as blueberries from the refrigerator.
“She came in at 7:12 PM. First thing she did was open the fridge — not to check what to cook. Just stood there for a bit, took 2 apples, put them in her bag. Then started cooking,” the chatbot informed the techie.
The AI also kept track of how long she took to cook the food, and how hygienically she performed her tasks, telling the techie that she “touched the dustbin lid, scratched her nose, then rolled your chapati with the same hands.”
‘Three apples gone’
A couple of days later, Tanwar asked his AI companion for a weekly report on the cook. He was informed that she stole several fruits.
“This week — 4 fridge visits before starting to cook. 3 apples gone, banana from Tuesday missing, caught her eating your blueberries on Thursday — 6-7 of them, standing at the fridge,” the AI said.
It did not stop there — it also told the Bengaluru techie that his cook wiped the kitchen slab on all seven days of the week, but only the visible part and that the “area behind the stove hasn't been touched since Monday.”
It ended by reminding Tanwar that his cook charges nearly ₹5,000 a month. “She bills 4800 a month for this, Just putting that out there,” the AI said.
How the AI monitor works
The AI roommate works by continuously monitoring a room using a CCTV camera. To protect privacy, it detects faces locally and blurs them before sending any visual information to the AI for processing.
Tanwar said the blurred video is fed into a vision AI model (currently Claude Haiku 4.5 — although he plans to move fully to a local model on a Raspberry Pi), which interprets the scene and passes the information to a language model. The language model then generates responses, interactions, or behaviours, making the AI feel like a “roommate” that can talk. (Also read: Bengaluru man turns family screen-time habit into a competitive leaderboard challenge: ‘Winner will choose dinner’)
“Next I'll add gas detection and idle time tracking. a lot more to build. tbh it's not a great version, it's early and rough but yet, but it's already catching things I never would have noticed,” he wrote on X.
A debate on ethics
His post has drawn mixed reactions on social media. While some debated the ethics of surveilling household help, others criticised the techie for firing the cook.
“Pays ₹4800 (50$) to the cook per month. Spies on them. Brags and gets celebrated for the spying. Btw, plugging AI to parse the video stream is not the brag that you think it is,” wrote one X user.
“How are you people this petty,” another wondered. “Why not offer her some food? Have you thought about that,” a third person asked.
To this, Tanwar replied, “I confronted her twice before setting this up. After 2 weeks she was back to the same thing. I’m ok with her taking food with my permission but stealing is a no.”
