My cat's meows got translated by an AI pet app and now I'm in trouble

I downloaded one of those 'understand your pet' apps about six months ago that uses AI to analyze animal sounds. At first it just said my cat Mittens was 'hungry' or 'annoyed', which was obvious. Last week, after an update, it started giving me full sentences like 'The human forgot the second breakfast' and 'The red dot toy is a lie'. The change happened overnight because they added a new language model trained on thousands of cat videos. Now Mittens stares at me while the app speaks her 'thoughts' and my partner thinks I'm spoiling her. Has anyone else's pet tech gotten weirdly specific after an AI update?

3 comments

3 Comments

vera_murphy1mo ago

Actually I saw something on the news about this last week. They were talking about how these pet translation apps are getting way too good because the AI is pulling from tons of cat behavior data now. My neighbor's dog app started saying things like 'I want the good cheese, not the cheap one' and she thought it was hilarious until the dog started staring at the fridge every time the app spoke. I think the developers are just trying to make the apps more fun but it's definitely crossing into creepy territory. Mittens probably loves the attention though, cats are smart enough to figure out when they're being listened to.

oliver_wilson4911d ago

Tried one of those apps with my cat once. It kept saying "warm spot on the carpet" and then sure enough he'd go lay there. Probably just a coincidence but it was enough to make me delete it.

danielhenderson1mo ago

Hold on, you're telling me Mittens actually stares at you while the app voices her thoughts, @vera_murphy?