{"id":5661,"date":"2026-08-18T12:11:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=5661"},"modified":"2026-08-18T12:11:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:11:32","slug":"google-home-gemini-pet-memory-nest-camera-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=5661","title":{"rendered":"Google\u2019s Pet Memory forgot who my cats are"},"content":{"rendered":"


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One of the best things my smart home does is help me care for my pets<\/a>, and security cameras are particularly useful for keeping track of my many critters. But the barrage of notifications they send often means I miss important ones. So, when Google announced its new Pet Memory feature for Gemini for Home<\/a>, I thought this could be the perfect solution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Pet Memory promises to teach your Google Home smart home who your pets are, allowing connected Nest cameras to go beyond simply telling you they saw an animal to which<\/em> animal they saw. It can then use that knowledge to adapt your smart home to your pet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My plan was to use it to keep a digital eye on my three cats while working in my home office, distinguish them from one another, and automate their feeding based on who was at the feeder. But after two weeks of testing, Google\u2019s AI still can\u2019t tell my three cats apart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Tuxedo<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Boone giving the Google Nest Cam a good close-up.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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My house is on a suburban, three-quarter-acre lot in a quiet neighborhood, and I take full advantage of all this space to have as many animals as possible (my husband has already said no to a goat and horse). But I\u2019ve managed to wrangle a flock of free-ranging chickens, a large, counter-surfing Wirehaired Pointing Griffon called Gus, two indoor\/outdoor cats, and \u2014 most exciting of all \u2014 a new kitten.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As The Verge<\/em>\u2019s smart home reviewer, I test a lot of connected tech and have found my best use case for security cameras is monitoring my pets around my house and yard. They help keep the chickens safer from predators and my lunch safer from Gus, and act as a type of digital pet door for the cats. When I get a notification that there\u2019s an animal at the door via a video doorbell and\/or outdoor camera, it\u2019s likely a cat wants to come in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Grey<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Osa the kitten checking out the Nest Cam.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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While I only have one dog and I don\u2019t really need to distinguish the chickens by name, there were three things I thought Pet Memory could do to help me manage my three cats. First, identify which cat wanted in, and help prevent false alerts \u2014 such as when it\u2019s my neighbor\u2019s cat sitting on my porch, or when it\u2019s a chicken peering in at the back door. Second, tell me whether all my pets were safely inside before dark. And finally, provide personalized automated feeding for each feline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Recognizing individual pets is the latest step in a rapid evolution of smart security cameras. While some dedicated pet cams promise facial recognition<\/a>, most standard security cameras could only alert you to motion until recently. Advances in machine learning and now generative AI are bringing more descriptive alerts. Instead of just announcing \u201cmotion alert,\u201d cameras can increasingly tell you exactly what they saw, without you having to open the app and wait for a clip to load.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"White<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Smokey is the only cat Google Home remembered; it thinks every cat the Nest Cams see is Smokey.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Nest has long been ahead of the game here, especially when it comes to critters. Its Nest Cam IQ, launched in 2017, could distinguish people from pets, and Google later brought animal detection<\/a> to Nest cameras. More recently, Google added text descriptions<\/a> that use AI to describe what the camera sees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Amazon\u2019s Ring<\/a>, Wyze<\/a>, and Apple Home (via its HomeKit Secure Video<\/a>) have also recently added AI-powered descriptions, and these often include the type of animal detected (not always correctly). But Google Home is the first to personalize it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"<em>Setting<\/a><\/div>\n
\"<em>It<\/a><\/div>\n