Former Alexa Engineer Creates MeowTalk App That Translates Cats’ ‘Language’ For Pet Owners

Despite countless tips all over the internet on how to “read” your cat—from the position of the ears to the signals sent with the tail—most of the time, you can’t figure out what’s on your furry friend’s mind. Wouldn’t it be easier to know what your cat’s saying before it gets into shenanigans in your house or, let’s be real—hurts you?

This outlandish idea that seems like a sci-fi movie might actually be possible now as engineers have made the first step to translate the vocabulary of meows into words humans can understand. Javier Sanchez, a former Amazon engineer who worked on Alexa and is now a project manager at tech company Akvelon, tried to take cat-human communication to the next level with a new MeowTalk app which can supposedly translate the secret feline language.

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Image credits: pixabay

Cats don’t have a shared language, but along with nine lives, cats’ sounds translate into nine universal basic intents such as “I’m hungry” or “I’m in pain.” However, each cat has unique meows that go beyond that. Using advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, the MeowTalk app aims to translate your cat’s unique sound. Basically, the app is learning as you are. Pet owners can record their cat’s meows and fine-tune the app when they believe the translation was accurate to train the app to recognize their cat’s specific vocalization and intentions.

Image credits: istockphoto

“Using machine learning, MeowTalk instantaneously translates your cat’s meows into one of nine general cat intents; these nine intents represent cat moods and states of mind. But each cat also has its own unique vocalization and vocabulary of meows that goes beyond these nine general intents,” the app description reads. “You can train the MeowTalk app to learn your cat’s unique vocabulary of meows (cat talk) by telling the app what each meow means when your cat makes it. When you give the app 5 to 10 examples of a specific meow for your cat (e.g. ‘food,’ ‘let me out’), the app can start to recognize that meow (be your cat translator) when it hears it.”

Image credits: MeowTalk

“MeowTalk is not static; instead, it learns and evolves with each translation that you confirm, adding to its corpus, just as we would add new words into our own memory banks or language processing programs,” Constantine Korovkin, the COO and co-founder of Akvelon, writes in a blog post.

Image credits: MeowTalk

The developer of the app, Javier Sanchez, said he has trained his app to recognize his cat Mittens’ meows for “let me out” and “feed me,” but you have to be ready to invest your time in teaching the app.

Image credits: MeowTalk

Cats’ parents seem to be excited about the opportunity to finally find out what their cats are saying. The app has already over 100k downloads on Google Play. The app is free for iOS and Android users; however, unlocking all the functions and gaining full access to the app will cost you $0.99.

As MeowTalk is still under development, it still has mixed reviews in the store. While people admit the app is in an early stage and has some flaws and bugs, it’s a delightful and entertaining way to pass the time with their pets.

Some people were skeptical or encountered glitches and errors in the app

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Others reported the app is actually pretty accurate and had fun playing with it

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

Image credits: MeowTalk

The client support is very promising as they react to each feedback and help solve the issues people face with the app. MeowTalk’s team plans to add more possibilities to the app, such as other languages besides English. But the ultimate goal is creating a smart collar that will translate your cat’s meows in real time as it’s “speaking” with a vocal response.