The Shazam Band is a new AI-powered collar that includes speakers and sensors that let your pet talk to you, just like the dogs in the Pixar movie UP. When your pet has the band on, you can have a conversation with it and the band will emit a human voice in response to your questions.
You can also use the Shazam Band to track your pet if they wander off, and it will alert you via SMS if they’re in danger, e.g. from other animals or traffic, or if they have been left somewhere. You can find them using the Shazam app and the GPS inside the band.
A real life UP
Ever since the Pixar movie UP came out in 2009, people have been trying to make a real-life version of a collar that lets your pet talk to you. Back in 2021, TechRadar even interviewed the creators of Petpuls, one of the first AI-powered dog collars that aimed to give your pet a voice.
So far, no one has really managed to crack a talking pet collar, but Shazam aims to make humans and animals talk once and for all. To find out more, we sat down with John McHale, CEO of Personifi AI, the company behind Shazam. John explained that he got the idea to use artificial intelligence to help pets communicate after his dog, Roscoe, was bitten by a rattlesnake and almost died because he didn’t know what had happened. “It got me thinking about AI and how the tragedy could have been averted, and it became clear that we could use AI in such a way that if Roscoe was bitten by a rattlesnake, even if I wasn’t around, could he have written to me and told me at once that he had had a rattlesnake. That was the making of Shazam.”
Sentence augmentation
Shazam works with any type of pet that can fit the collar, so think dog, cat, goat, or whatever four-legged friend you have running around your house. It works by using AI trained on large data sets in the same way ChatGPT is trained.
The band contains a number of sensors, in particular it seems to listen to the words you say to your pet and react to them, but it also interprets the kinematic behavior of your pet. The result is that the Shazam Band provides what McHale calls “sensory augmentation.” What this means is that it articulates your pet’s mood, experience and reactions back to you – as they happen – with little sound bites like “I’m sad right now” and “You know I need to snuggle”. The idea is that you start to get the hang of having a conversation with your pet and over time it learns and becomes more natural.
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But does it work?
The million dollar question, of course, is does it actually work? I had a live demo of Shazam by the Personifi AI team in Texas and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. John McHale demonstrated with his own dog, Roscoe, wearing the Shazam band, and I got to hear the dog ‘talk’.
Without getting to test the device on my own pet it’s really hard to say how well it works, but in the demo we saw Roscoe’s Shazam collar successfully interpret when his owner was happy or sad and produce the appropriate answer. Also, when McHale wrestled with a dog toy in Roscoe’s mouth, much to his delight, his collar came out with Captain America’s famous catchphrase, “I could do that all day!”.
They say you should never work with children and animals, and during the live demo, Roscoe was clearly in no mood for fun. He preferred to lie on the couch, but it’s impossible not to smile when you hear a dog ‘talk’ for the first time, especially since the voices have all been voiced by comic actors. Many are voiced by Bobby Johnson, AKA RxCKStxR, a social media celebrity known for giving pets a voice online.
Choose a persona
There are 25 different personas you can choose from for your pet, and each one is actually a different voice. During your first 30 days of owning the Shazam Band, you get to try them all before settling on the persona that best suits your pet. We heard a lovable goof, a witty southern belle and a fast-talking mob boss. Do any of them sound like your pet?
There were also a few options for the international market – there was one British voice (male and classy, ​​think Hugh Grant) and a female Spanish voice. Most striking was the Jamaican voice, which used a Patois.
Considering how crazy people get with their pets, the potential for Shazam is clearly huge, and once we get our hands on one in November, we’ll bring you a full review. The ethical considerations of anthropomorphizing your pet still need to be considered, but as a cat owner, I would love to be able to find out what my cat really wants when it looks at me, purrs and meows. Is it attention? Is it food? Is it game time? It would be very helpful to know.
In the end, I feel a little insecure about the whole talking pet situation. It was certainly fun for the owner, but I wonder what Roscoe thought of it all. He seemed quite happy with voices coming from his collar, but it’s not like he had a choice in the matter. What if he’s a dog who doesn’t want to be anthropomorphized? I guess despite the inroads Shazam makes into human-animal interactions, we’ll never really be able to ask him.
Shazam Band can be pre-ordered in two different versions. The full GPS-enabled band costs $595, and a smaller fully featured $495 version is available from shazampet.com.