"Is my cat happy?" - This question may seem strange to those who do not have a cat, but for people who have had, have or want to have one, the question is not so unusual.
Sylvester.AI - a joint venture between two artificial intelligence companies in Canada, have created an application (prototype) called "Tably", formerly known as "Happy or Not". Basically, Tably uses photos of cats to determine their level of happiness, based on facial expressions.
The app was launched after developers at the company discovered the Feline Grimace Scale (FGS), a scientifically proven tool for assessing acute pain in cats based on changes in facial expression, published in Scientific Reports and Nature in 2019. This brought the team the idea to apply the machine learning expertise to this idea as well.
The biggest challenge is in cats who do not react habitually when they have pain. In other cases, depending on the eyes, ears, mustache or head position - it can be determined whether or not a large one is in pain.
According to the creators, the accuracy is up to 97%, when the image of the cat is clear, complete and of high quality.
Cat owners will usually use it to find out how a cat feels after undergoing surgery, or to find out why it is constantly hiding around the house.
We are currently working on a final version of the application that will be downloaded on iOS and Android, but at the moment it is not known exactly when it will be launched. The general goal is for the same thing to be done "with many species", not the cats themselves.
Source: Wired
