BY: SAMANTHA BARTLETT, DVM
Shelters and rescues are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence software to help find homes for lost animals. Some focus more on finding lost dogs while other focus on using AI for algorithms to help shelter animals find their forever homes.
Shadow, an AI startup, has developed an app for finding lost dogs. The app uses pictures posted by shelters and on social networks to find a match for owner-supplied pictures of lost dogs. The app finds possible matches to the dog’s photo and offers to help the owner find the pet. Researchers working with pet2net recently published a study stating AI recognition software can be up to 95% accurate in identifying dogs in social media images. Shadow started in the New York area in 2018. Since then it has reunited almost 10,000 dogs with their families. More information on the app can be found at shadowapp.com/. Another app, Finding Rover, works in a similar fashion to Shadow and has found approximately 15,000 lost dogs to date.
On the other side of the equation, many shelters are using AI to help find homes for stray animals. AI is used to profile individual animals as well as potential future owners leading to more suitable adoption outcomes. Shelters are also using AI to map out hotspots for abandoned animals and to determine where to best allocate resources such as community education campaigns and low cost vaccination and spay/neuter resources.
A company in China developed a smart shelter for cats. The many cameras feed into an AI system that can identify and open the door for individual cats and determine whether they hare spayed or neutered by their ear crop. Cats inside have access to a warm environment with food and water. The system is also capable of informing handlers if an animal appears ill.
An animal shelter in Stockton, California is using an AI program to find an animal’s best angle when photographing it for adoption photos. This is especially helpful with timid or frightened animals that don’t always take the best pictures. The program, called Adoptimize, analyzes the pet from a short video and creates still pictures from the best views. Currently two other shelters besides Stockton are participating in a pilot program.
While applications are currently limited in use, it is clear that artificial intelligence can play a big role in increasing adoption rates and decreasing incoming populations for animal shelters in the future.
