With Petlibro’s Scout Smart Camera, Even Your Pet Now Lives in a Surveillance State

As the pet-tech writer on the Reviews team, I have tested a whole lot of animal-related tech, and the gadgets from brand Petlibro have consistently been my top picks for best automatic feeders and automatic cat water fountains. So when I was able to test the first pet camera in Petlibro’s lineup, one that promised to be the first of its kind with built-in AI that could recognize and organize videos of up to five pets, I was excited. Unfortunately, this is the first product from Petlibro I’ve tested that has been just OK.

While general security cameras let you watch your house (and pet) while you’re away, pet cameras often have more pet-specific features, like dispensing treats or a two-way speaker to communicate while away. Pet cameras with SD card or cloud storage allow you to watch your pet anywhere, at any time, and review footage, plus these special pet features can help ease common issues like separation anxiety or boredom. The Scout is less tailored to the pet and more for the human, categorizing and analyzing your pet’s behavior so you can keep tabs on whether anything is amiss.

Let’s Talk About Specs, Baby

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Like everything I’ve tested from Petlibro, the compact pet camera’s design is sleek, and the app is intuitive and easy to use. The camera has 1080p HD video, color night vision, two-way audio, a bird call (why?), and flexible mounting options. Setup was a breeze, where I basically just had to plug it in, connect to Wi-Fi (it works with both 2.4- and 5-GHz networks), and set up profiles for my two cats in the app. Initially, I had to upload pictures and label my cats by name. But as the Scout camera captured footage of the cats, the built-in AI quickly learned which cat was which, uploading photos for my review so that it could get smarter at recognizing each cat.

All of the footage was crystal-clear in 1080p HD, changing from black-and-white to color vision, depending on visibility, like ambient light from my TV while the room was dark. All of the videos taken during the day were in HD color. It has 360-degree pan-and-tilt (PTZ) capabilities and auto pet tracking, meaning that the AI will automatically detect, record, and upload videos with what it identifies as the pet activity in the log.

In much of the pet tech I test, the connected apps are lacking. But that’s not been the case with anything I’ve tested from Petlibro. Through the app, you can view live footage, watch clips organized by day, pet, and activity, and review 30-second highlight reels of each day. Activities are organized by pet and categorized by type: Eating, Drinking, Litter Box, Selfie, Motion, and Other (which was usually just my cats lounging on the bed). You can also easily send feedback about each pet and behavior with a click of a button, so the AI can learn to correctly label each pet and behavior.

Have No Fear, AI Is Here

Petlibro touts the camera’s intuitive AI features, but in reality, Scout is like any other pet camera unless you pay for the AI subscription, which is more expensive than other subscription services I’ve used while testing pet cameras. The AI Standard plan gets you the AI compilation highlight reels, filters videos by activity, and has seven days of video history at $120 per year or $12 per month. AI Premium is the tier above and gets you all the features in Standard plus up to 30 days of stored history and early access to new AI-powered features, at $170 per year or $17 per month. And sadly, if you buy more than one camera, you’ll need to pay that hefty AI subscription fee for each.

When I first set up the camera, I used it for about a week and a half without the paid AI subscription. Without it, it’s just a basic pet camera with limited playback and storage and no ability to differentiate pets or activities. The pricey subscription service for AI is what makes this camera stand out, but it’s basically nothing new. I’ve tested Petcube and Furbo pet cameras with their own versions of AI that label and categorize the activities they observe for much cheaper.

Frustratingly, when I upgraded to the Scout’s paid subscription service, it caused a major glitch and for about five days the camera didn’t track pets, labeled “no activities found” under the log, and had no historical clips or log available to view. All of the footage was gone, and the AI no longer recognized the cats. When I tried to add pet pictures to help AI reidentify them, it gave me a “Server request error, please try again later” message. Once a firmware update happened, I had to essentially start over—the camera had to relearn my cats, and I lost all previous footage.

One of the main differences between the Petlibro Scout camera and its competitors is the Scout’s ability to create AI-written observations of what’s going on, which can be very comical. Every time my cat Clover used the litter box, it wrote, “Clover is calmly inside her litter box, taking care of her needs in a private and comfortable moment.” When it recorded my other cat eating, it summarized, “Basil is calmly enjoying a meal with his head lowered toward the food, taking a peaceful moment to nourish himself.”

There’s also a built-in Q&A bot named Tobi that answers questions about your pet’s behavior and activity. I found this feature pretty much useless; it mostly just told me that Clover was more active than Basil and that Basil was overweight (rude), and told me how many times each cat was active, although this feature is limited since it can only monitor one room. Tobi always ended the message with the disclaimer that all answers were based on AI detection and may be “incomplete or mislabeled.”

Privacy Problems

Oftentimes, the activity tracking wouldn’t label correctly; I could see in video playback that Basil was in the litter box, but the AI never categorized it. It would also randomly display “no activities found” under each day, even though I knew activities had occurred in the room and the camera was on. The categorize feature seems great in theory, but unless your cat is eating, drinking, and using the litter box in one area, it’s not going to be able to catch and correctly categorize it all. In fact, I think the only place it would work is if you had a large room with no objects or walls where all of your cats’ goings-on happen. Most people won’t have this, so I set it up to monitor their litter box habits and daily lounging—it was away from the water bowl and most of the food, so it rarely captured those types of activities.

During testing I went out of town several times, which is when I use the camera the most to see the goings-on. Twice the camera shut off, and I couldn’t reset it or turn it back on from the app, so I spent the rest of my vacation not knowing what was happening at home. It turned off randomly twice while I was at home amid a weak Wi-Fi signal, and again I couldn’t figure out a way to get it to reengage except by unplugging and replugging. The camera orients itself when replugged and almost always went back to the starting position, which was strangely backward, facing the back end where the cord input is, and just recorded the wall until I manually rotated it.

For the last half of testing, I had it in my bedroom, and it did a good job of not including me (a human) in the historical video or pet tracking, which made me feel a bit better about the privacy concerns that come up when testing indoor security cameras. However, because it was in my room, it probably caught me changing clothes a time or two, and videos are stored in Petlibro’s Cloud, which raises privacy concerns. There’s an option to “donate” your footage to be used to teach the AI, and the Tobi bot often compared my cats’ stats to other Scout users. There’s not a ton of data on the technical information, and the privacy policy is vague, and because there’s no option to store footage on an SD card, you’re forced to store everything in Petlibro’s Cloud.

Petlibro states that if video footage expires, it’s automatically deleted from the cloud, and files are never shared externally or used for AI training or unrelated purposes. It claims there are multiple layers of security, like encrypted data transmission and storage, strict access controls, regular security audits, and compliance with various data protection laws.

Overall, like many new AI-enabled devices, the Scout camera promises revolution, but the features are mostly nothing new and cost a heck of a lot more.