Petivity's new smart feeder asks the question 'what if Flock, but for cats?'

Petivity, which is owned by Purina, just introduced a new smart pet feeder designed exclusively for cats. The main hook here is that it has cameras and uses AI-enabled facial recognition algorithms to track when and how much a particular feline is eating. That's right: the flockification of pet feeders has begun.

In all seriousness, this could be a boon for multi-cat households. This is especially true if cats have to eat separate types of food, in the case of one requiring a special diet due to medical reasons. The device can "learn the unique feeding behaviors of up to five cats." It won't be able to swap out foods, but it'll let users know if a sneaky cat is snacking on stuff they shouldn't be snacking on.

The gadget tracks portion sizes, eating frequency and feeding patterns. This can help turn "everyday feeding time into a source of real, actionable health insight." The company says it can detect subtle shifts in behavior that should be useful during a visit to the vet. All of this information is accessible via an affiliated app.

It's also a standard smart pet feeder with a camera, so it lets people remotely lay out kibble via an app and create custom schedules. Cat enthusiasts can check in on their furry friends with video calls. It also provides alerts when the kibble is running low. Many of the components are dishwasher-safe, which is not always the case with fancy-pants pet feeders.

The AI tools were trained on 21,000 real-world feeding sessions, 1,400 hours of video and more than 15,000 pictures of cats. Petivity also says that "99.5 percent of cats were happy to eat from the feeder" during product testing.

There is one downside here, and it's the same one that plagues the vast majority of automatic pet feeders. It only handles kibble and not wet food. There are automatic feeders out there for wet food, but they require refrigeration technology. The Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats is available for purchase right now and costs $150. Thankfully, there's no subscription required to access the AI tracking tools.