Artificial intelligence and companion animals: Perspectives on digital healthcare for dogs, cats, and pet ownership

The exponential increase in global pet ownership has been creating an urgent demand for novel solutions to upgrade care for companion animals, particularly dogs and cats. Similar to its impact on other domains, artificial intelligence (AI) delivers an alternative solution to this pressing requirement. Profound transformation in pet care management is underway with the application of cutting-edge AI technologies incorporating various machine learning (ML) algorithms. This thorough review highlights the expanding potential of AI in reshaping the pet industry and will embark on a two-fold exploration. The first section offers a brief explanation of AI paradigms, outlining essential concepts and presenting examples of their use in the management of companion animals. A more extensive second section provides a meticulous exploration of the diverse applications of AI for pets including health monitoring, behaviour monitoring, feed and feeding systems, parasite detection, artificial, virtual, and robotic pets, and veterinary care and support. It can be easily predicted from the ongoing research that the continuous integration of AI-driven innovations in the pet care sector will result in a balanced blend of compassion and technology offering optimized pet care. Currently, this integration still faces inherent challenges, and it is imperative to navigate them in order to leverage full potential of AI for companion animals.