Google Pet Memory promises to teach your smart home who your pets are, but after a fortnight of testing it could not tell three cats apart. The feature, part of Gemini for Home, is designed to let connected Nest cameras go beyond simply reporting that they have seen an animal, instead identifying which specific animal appeared. The smart home can then adapt to individual pets based on that knowledge.
The idea was to use Pet Memory to keep a digital eye on three cats while working from a home office, distinguish them from one another, and automate feeding depending on who was at the feeder. In practice, the AI still could not reliably recognise the individual felines.
How Pet Memory Is Meant to Work
Security cameras have proven particularly useful for monitoring pets around a house and yard. They help keep free-ranging chickens safer from predators, deter a counter-surfing dog from stealing lunch, and act as a type of digital pet door for cats. A notification that an animal is at the door, sent via a video doorbell or outdoor camera, usually signals that a cat wants to come inside.
Three specific tasks were expected of the feature. First, it would identify which cat wanted to come in and help prevent false alerts, such as a neighbour’s cat sitting on the porch or a chicken peering in at the back door. Second, it would confirm whether all the pets were safely indoors before dark. Third, it would provide personalised automated feeding for each cat.
The Wider Shift in Smart Cameras
Recognising individual pets represents the latest step in a rapid evolution of smart security cameras. Some dedicated pet cameras promise facial recognition, but until recently most standard security cameras could only alert users to motion. Advances in machine learning and now generative AI are enabling more descriptive alerts.
Instead of simply announcing a motion alert, cameras can increasingly tell users exactly what they saw without requiring them to open the app and wait for a clip to load. That capability is central to what Pet Memory aims to deliver through Nest cameras.
During testing, only one of the three cats, named Smokey, was remembered by Google Home. The system identified every cat the Nest cameras detected as Smokey, failing to distinguish the other two animals across the two-week trial period.
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Image: theverge.com
