Google’s Pet Memory can’t tell my cats apart
google's nest pet memory feature failed to distinguish between specific cats after two weeks, rendering its smart automation promises useless for multi-pet homes.
google promoted its pet memory feature in gemini for home as a way to teach nest cameras to recognize specific pets by name to enable smarter notifications and automations. however, testing by the verge revealed the system failed to distinguish between the reviewer's three cats—boone, smokey, and osa—despite two weeks of attempts to train it. because the ai cannot reliably tell the animals apart, the promised downstream automations like pet-specific feeding or targeted alerts remain non-functional. this highlights the persistent gap between ai marketing claims and the technical reality of computer vision in variable, real-world environments within the smart home sector.