Remember Lassie? The super-intelligent border collie who saved children trapped in wells?
The fictional concept of communicating with dogs is closer to reality than you'd think.
Pet tech startup Traini, maker of a $700 "smart collar" that translates dogs' emotions into human language, closed a $7.5m funding round in December.
Here's how it works:
- Traini's collar tracks signals like barks and heart rate, feeding AI models trained on behavioral data and insight from 2m+ dogs and hundreds of peer-reviewed studies.
- The AI compares those signals to recordings of humans expressing similar emotions.
- A companion app translates those signals into plain language — relaying statements like "I'm anxious" or "I want to play" with 94% accuracy.
The tech is unique, but the company doesn't operate in a vacuum (and not just because they scare dogs).
Animal translation projects are in the works across industries:
- The non-profit Earth Species Project made the first large audio-language model for bioacoustics, making headway on dictionaries for animal sounds.
- Baidu, owner of China's largest search engine, recently filed a patent for a system that could potentially translate animal vocalizations to human language.
- The Coller-Dolittle Prize offers a $10m equity investment or $500k in cash for researchers who create tech that passes the "Turing test for animals."
Interesting as these organizations are, the science behind them can be contentious.
What does that mean?
Some animal behavioral specialists and AI experts are wary of companies touting models that offer one-to-one animal sound-to-human language translations.
Others point out there's no guarantee animals could understand anything we say back.
Still, the global pet economy is estimated to eclipse $500B by 2030, and many consider their furry friends to be furry family — so any product that offers a viable perspective on what dogs think is potentially lucrative.
The fact that there's a bit of an arms (or paws) race to develop that tech makes sense.
