The trend of AI pet-keeping: A thousand-yuan "IQ tax" and immeasurable emotional value
At 11 p.m., Chen Wei received a mobile phone push notification: "Your ragdoll cat 'Qiuqiu' has used the litter box three times in the past hour. It is recommended that you pay attention to its urinary health."
Subsequently, she opened the supporting app for the AI litter box worth 3,999 yuan and carefully checked the detailed charts.
In Chen Wei's view, this is just an ordinary day for her as a pet owner. What she doesn't know is that the high - cost bills she pays for her pet's health are quietly changing the direction of this industry.
01 Smart Devices Reconstruct the Pet - Owning Experience
Different from traditional pet supplies, almost all smart pet devices revolve around the core selling point of "understanding your pet better". The implementation of this concept has gone through a clear technological evolution path.
In the early stage (before 2015), smart pet devices mainly featured basic automation functions, such as timed feeders and automatic water dispensers, which solved the most basic "food and water" problems in pet - owning. The products during this period had limited intelligence and were more of electronic transformations of mechanical structures.
With the popularization of the Internet of Things technology (from 2016 to 2020), smart pet devices entered the networked monitoring stage. Through Wi - Fi connection and mobile apps, pet owners could remotely check their pets' status and control the operation of the devices. Representative products of this stage included smart cameras and remotely controllable feeders, which initially realized the function of "remote companionship".
From 2021 to the present, smart pet devices have entered the period of in - depth AI intervention. These devices not only collect data but also can conduct analysis and prediction through algorithms.
The smart litter box can monitor the cat's weight change, toilet frequency, and the state of excrement through weight sensors and image recognition technology; the AI collar can evaluate the pet's activity level, sleep quality, and emotional state through motion sensors and sound analysis. Some high - end products have even begun to integrate a health early - warning system, establishing a pet health baseline through long - term data analysis to detect abnormal fluctuations in a timely manner.
The fundamental driving force behind this transformation is the transfer of emotional needs brought about by the changes in China's social structure.
Data shows that the number of single - person households in China increased by 1.15 times in ten years, rising from 67.09 million households in 2010 to 125 million households in 2020. While urban youth have gained a highly autonomous living space, they also face a structural gap in emotional companionship.
Pets happen to fill this gap, and smart devices further strengthen this emotional connection. 61.5% of users clearly stated that they are willing to pay for their pets' "emotional health". Smart devices are upgrading from "optional configurations" to "must - haves for pet owners". This emotional projection creates a unique consumption psychology: pet owners indirectly satisfy their yearning for a "refined life" and their self - identity as a "responsible pet owner" by purchasing high - end smart devices for their pets.
Under the trend of "refined pet - owning", a series of high - priced smart devices have quickly occupied the living space of young pet owners. The smart litter box has become a standard for multi - cat families and busy office workers. The prices of the 25 products evaluated by the Shanghai Consumer Protection Commission range from 679 yuan to 2,339 yuan, and the imported high - end models are even priced over 7,000 yuan.
According to the prediction of Business Research Insights, the market for smart dog collars will reach 8.97 billion US dollars in 2035, with a compound annual growth rate of up to 22.7% from 2026 to 2035. This growth not only comes from functional innovation but also benefits from the improvement of supporting services such as pet health insurance, which provides more reasons for consumers to buy high - priced devices.
02 The Ideal is Plump, but the Reality is Skinny
Currently, the core value of smart pet devices has completely shifted from hardware functions to the in - depth application of AI algorithms. The industry is experiencing a technological leap from basic data collection to complex health prediction, and algorithms are gradually becoming the "second pair of eyes" for pet health.
During the technological evolution of smart pet devices, they can be divided into three levels according to the depth of AI technology application.
Devices at the basic perception level, such as the smart feeder of HomeRun, mainly achieve accurate measurement and timed feeding, ensuring food quantity control through weight sensors; the smart water dispenser of Dogness records the pet's water intake through flow monitoring. These devices realize the digital management of the feeding process, but the data analysis dimension is relatively single.
The representative product at the behavior analysis level is the smart litter box of PETKIT. Its high - end models not only clean automatically but also integrate a multi - cat recognition system. By combining weight sensors with algorithms, it can distinguish the toilet habits of multiple cats in the same family and track the weight change trend of each cat.
More notably, some models have begun to try to analyze the shape of excrement through image algorithms. Although the medical accuracy is still controversial, it marks that the devices are moving from "recording what happened" to "trying to understand what it means".
Devices at the health prediction level attempt to build a complete health profile. Pet’s Home has accessed the large - model capabilities of Tencent Cloud TI Platform, which can comprehensively integrate multi - source data from smart collars, feeders, cameras, etc., to establish a baseline model of pet behavior. When it detects patterns deviating from the baseline, such as a sudden increase in water intake or an abnormal decrease in activity level, the system will generate a health reminder, realizing a transformation from "post - event recording" to "pre - event warning".
Frontier exploration focuses on emotional interaction. The global pet training platform Traini tries to distinguish vocalizations with different meanings by training a voiceprint model with more than 100,000 hours of canine audio. The WarmData digital life library created by Macfortune under Goodbaby Pet aims to build a foundation for cross - brand data analysis services.
Despite the broad technological prospects, the smart pet device industry still faces severe challenges in technological reliability.
A recent evaluation of 25 smart litter boxes by the Shanghai Consumer Protection Commission showed that in five simulated scenarios where a pet might get stuck, only the products of 7 brands, such as PETKIT and Catlink, could stop running in time in all tests, while the products of some niche brands did not trigger the protection mechanism in any scenario, indicating significant safety hazards.
Data accuracy is another major pain point. A consumer in Beijing reported that the continuous weighing results of the same cat by the MiJia smart litter box he purchased fluctuated by up to 0.5 kilograms within the same period, while the brand claimed an accuracy of ± 0.1 kilograms. Such errors may lead to misjudgments in the care of elderly or sick cats that require precise weight trend monitoring.
In addition, the data barriers between different brands severely limit the potential value of smart devices.
Ms. Li, a Shanghai user with multiple cats, showed four independent apps on her phone, which respectively control PETKIT's smart litter box, Dogness's automatic feeder, Furbo's pet camera, and FitBark's smart collar. "Each app provides some information, but they cannot form an overall picture." This fragmented experience is the current common situation in the industry.
03 The Breakthrough of Smart Pet Devices
From the above analysis, it is not difficult to see that the smart pet device industry is at a critical transformation node, shifting from pursuing hardware sales growth to building a sustainable ecosystem centered on data and services. This fundamental change aims to solve the most intractable problems of "data islands" and "fragmented experiences" in the current industry, and its far - reaching impact may reshape the competition rules of the entire market.
To solve the problem that data is scattered in non - connected apps and cannot form a unified health profile, some leading enterprises are trying to integrate the ecosystem in the form of an open platform or a data center.
The "WarmData" digital life library created by Macfortune under Goodbaby Pet is a typical example. It is not just a database but also attempts to build a "digital twin" of pets. This platform establishes a dynamic model by integrating multi - dimensional data such as genetic sequencing, daily behavior (from smart hardware), and clinical diagnosis and treatment (in cooperation with pet hospitals).
In the future, its goal is to achieve precise health intervention. For example, by analyzing the genetic susceptibility of a certain breed of dog and the current change in its activity level, it can predict the risk of joint diseases in advance and recommend a customized health - care plan. This closed - loop from "monitoring" to "management" and then to "prevention" defines the real value of the service ecosystem.
In addition, the intensification of market segmentation has given rise to a diverse product matrix. On the one hand, "whole - house smart pet - owning solutions" for high - end users have begun to appear, such as the integrated system launched by Pet’s Home; on the other hand, vertical products targeting specific needs are emerging in an endless stream, such as smart collars specifically for monitoring cognitive decline in elderly dogs or slow - feeding bowls for helping overweight pets control their food intake precisely.
The sudden rise of the companion robot track has become another variable in the industry.
It is predicted that its market scale will surge from 75 billion yuan in 2023 to 304.3 billion yuan in 2029. This is not only the growth of devices but also the rise of "emotional subscription services". For example, the AI robot of the startup company "Companion Pet Technology" can not only simulate interactions but also learn the pet's personality based on its reactions. Through a subscription system, it updates interactive games and emotional feedback models weekly, transforming a one - time hardware purchase into a continuous delivery of emotional services.
The industry's profit model has thus been innovated. The gross profit margin of pure hardware sales is under pressure, and the hybrid model of "hardware + subscription service" is becoming the key to improving the lifetime value (LTV) of users.
The subscription service of the American brand Whisker (with its Litter - Robot litter box) provides health data analysis, automatic consumables delivery, and priority technical support, and the proportion of its service revenue continues to increase. Domestic brands such as Catlink and PETKIT have also quickly followed suit, launching similar membership systems, which forces enterprises to focus on improving long - term service capabilities rather than competing on short - term hardware parameters.
04 Conclusion
Back to Chen Wei's story. Three months later, she turned off most of the health reminder functions of the AI litter box.
"I found that when I stopped staring at the data every day and spent more time observing 'Qiuqiu' in person, our relationship became closer."
Her AI litter box is still working, but she no longer regards those data as the golden rule. She has learned to balance technology and intuition, data and observation. Perhaps what this 3,999 - yuan device has finally taught her is not how to use technology to raise a pet, but how not to be trapped by technology.
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