Will pets be able to tell you what their bodies need? What kind of toys they want? In a human voice? Soon apparently, if Fidotek Founder Andy Gibbs vision for the very first company to bring ‘Generative AI’ to life in the $120B pet industry, comes to fruition.
It all started the day Andy’s’ wife noticed his dog Roland’s water bowl was empty and hollered to him “Can’t you make a smart water bowl that tells me when it’s empty and needs to be refilled?”
Andy was sparked and started researching why dogs need water and decided he needed to track their water intake. He found out there’s water in canned food, but there’s no water in kibble. Then that train of thought took him into food, and then from there he learned of the global problem involving the number of pets who are overweight. Then he moved fast.
In 7 weeks, he had filed the first 10 patents. (Andy knows a thing or two about patents as that was his business for years and he already owns about 4 or 5 dozen patents but none till now in the pet industry.)
The Fidotek Founder is obviously excited about his current venture.
Andy says, “There’s no single company in the pet industry that is taking the Apple approach to delivering the pet version of the Apple Watch, the iTunes, the software. So, in the same way Apple has created an entire new ecosystem around watch, or as they did around the iPhone, we’re taking the same approach. It’s a very holistic hardware, software, and content approach to the entire pet industry. So we’re not selling a pet service, we’re not selling software, we’re selling the experience of a pet parent to know everything about their dog and give the dog the power to become a participating member of the family.”
You may have read that the world’s oldest dog Bobi, passed away this week in Portugal at the age of 31. A Guinness Book Record age for a dog. His long life was attributed to fresh air, fresh food, and a calm environment. Could AI figure out how all dogs can live that long? Fidotek Corp the Generative AI bioscience company focused on 120 million US pets, will likely be figuring out how all pets can live longer and stay healthy and much more.
Andy said, “We are taking a scientific approach to that and helping dogs live happier, healthier and hopefully longer. When we look at the 59% that are obese, if we can bring those dogs down to healthy weight, they’re going to live at least three years longer than their overweight peers. So, we’re giving them three years and that’s real debilitating conditions as they get older, diabetes, organ failure and so forth. Our artificial intelligence can identify the earliest onset from diabetes even before symptoms start to appear. So, if we can get that pet into the vet months or a year earlier for treatment, it might be as simple as changing their food. “
Its Next-Gen AI platform is poised to be the single-most consequential ecosystem digitally transforming multiple verticals in the burgeoning pet industry.
Fidotek is planning things like; Personalized Web3 Retail, Pet Diagnostics, Pet Health Insurance, Advanced Telemedicine, and Drug Development. His planned pet veterinary care insurance he says, is going to change the entire pet industry as we know it. And as an industry patent leader, it seems no single company currently offers a comparable solution. None, says Andy Gibbs, Founder & CEO who joined me from Arizona to share his excitement about what’s coming with Fidotek.
Enjoy this lively podcast of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show. If you’d rather read the transcript it is below.
You can listen to The Debbie Nigro Show weekdays 11-12noon ET in the NY/CT area at 1490 WGCH or just go to WGCH.com and hit ‘listen live’ from anywhere. No Politics, Always Relevant …smart, warm and fun.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
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And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show.
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♪♪
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I can’t imagine how many people lay in bed looking at the stars at night thinking, I have this idea, how am I going to bring this to life? I need to tell people about it. Well, I’m here to help somebody who started with that probable scenario and is now really forward in the generative AI section of the world, but only as it pertains to pets. That pet industry is humongous and I’m going to introduce you to the founder and CEO of a company called FidoTek. Now, before I introduce Andy Gibbs, I’m just going to tell you I have a good friend, Lois Whitman Hess, who I follow because she always has really interesting stories and really interesting clients. She’s a public relations mogul. I’ve known her for many years. that I should pay attention. So I was trying to read about this company, FidoTek, and I happened to catch the story exactly the same time I caught the story that the world’s oldest dog, Bobi passed away at the age of 31. And everybody was like, oh my God, how did the dog live so long? The dog lived long because he took care of himself, or somebody took care of him, and he was in a calm and peaceful environment. He had fresh food, fresh air, lots of love. And I’m thinking, okay, so maybe this company, Fidotek, is going to help recreate the long life of Bobi. So without further ado, I want to introduce you to the official mind behind this, Andy Gibbs. How are you?
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Welcome to my show.
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Hey, Debbie. Thanks.
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Great to be on. Were you laying in bed thinking about this originally? How did this idea come in your head? My wife hollered into me and said
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Roland’s water bowl is empty can’t you make a smart water bowl that tells me
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when it’s empty it needs to be refilled. I love it I love it I love it. And that was the start. And that was the start so you so she tells you this and who’d you know nobody likes to ignore their wife’s suggestion, but she wanted a good one so So now you how did you start moving on on that idea like what was the path?
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It was it was like super fast fast really I Researched why dogs need water and I needed to track water and There’s water in canned food, but there’s no water in kibble That took me into food. And then I said, well, you know, you just talked about overweight being a global problem.
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For kids, yeah.
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99% of dogs are overweight. And I said, okay, now I’m going to track the water and the food. But what if the dog is running around chasing lambs all day? Or if he’s sitting in front of a fireplace? So I have to track the activity.
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Oh, you were busy. Yeah, yeah, he was busy. We’re busy. All right. What? So So now, did you ever invent that? Because I like the idea a lot.
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In seven weeks, I had filed the first 10 patents. Really?
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Yes.
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Oh, wow. You’re smart. And you’re fast. Did you know anything about patents before that? I have I think four dozen, maybe five dozen patents.
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Okay, so understatement about knowing about the patent stuff.
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Okay. But have you ever done anything patent-wise in the pet industry? No. Okay, so now this is a whole new field here. And you know it obviously as well as those of us listening who understand how big the industry is. It’s like $120 billion, right? So that’s how big the industry is. Has anybody even remotely tried to go in the direction you’re going in with Fidotek as artificial intelligence goes
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related to pets? Little bits and pieces. Okay. So you have a company that’ll do a smart food bowl. Yeah. And another company that’ll do a Fitbit and another company that will have a little treat dispensing device in the home that’s connected to a camera and you can launch a treat from your work location. But to look at the holistic cat, there’s
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nobody that’s doing what we’re doing. Okay, so pet diagnostics is one of the things that I saw in the lineup of things Fidotek is planning to launch, right? Would that mean like a dog could like be in front of you and you just go, woo, with something artificial intelligence and you can see where they’re deficient, what they need, can they tell you? I mean, is that where you’re going with that?
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Well, here’s, here’s the whole thing with artificial intelligence. And, you know, people are wowed by the notion of artificial intelligence, but it’s been around for years and years and years. It’s just getting to the point where artificial intelligence can talk to you. For instance, an Alexa speaker.
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Right.
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Amazon Alexa speaker can turn on and say, hey, Debbie, you might be interested in these shoes. How does it know that? It knows that because it tracks everything that Debbie does. And it really understands your behavior. So if we apply that to dogs, we can understand when a dog is feeling bad, when a dog is hungry, when it needs to go out to go pee, and using some pretty sophisticated software, we can convert that to a voice that literally allows the dog to talk through an Amazon Alexa speaker. Oh my gosh, I’m getting an idea.
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Obviously dogs have, you know, a little, they’re a little vain to admit
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can they pick their own voice not only pick the voice male-female but you can actually a little French bulldog can pick a French accent I knew you’re gonna
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say that I mean I’m I’m I’m good I did I actually knew you’re gonna say that because I was imagining you know the Australian or British accent from the gorgeous little you know poodle and I’m thinking okay just because people have always wanted to you know pretend they were something else or better you can be anybody you want to be that those dogs start talking to people let me tell you this is gonna be a different world is that where you’re going you changing the world completely yes oh come on this is crazy answer is yes you have a patent on all this change
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retail yeah pet veterinary care insurance it’s going to change the entire pet industry as we know it.
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Are you ready for this?
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Are pet parents ready for this?
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Oh, very, very forward, very, very forward. Well, you know, I’m sure you have a comment yourself about the world’s longest living dog who just passed this week, sadly, at the age of 31. 31 and that was loud for anybody who’s ever had a dog and wanted it to live longer, right? This was a crazy Guinness Book of World Records length of living. Are you potentially? Bobi, yeah. Are you saying that, is it booby or Bobi?
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Bobi, B-O-B-i.
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Bobby, yeah, I thought so. I had Bobi. I did my fact checking, I had Bobi, Andy. Are you saying that people’s dogs and animals in general may, based on what you’re creating, be able to live extended lives, not necessarily 31 years, but a lot longer because of what you’re going to be
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able to do with artificial intelligence? A lot of companies say we help pets live happier, healthier, longer. And that’s a marketing slogan. We are taking a scientific approach to that and helping dogs live happier, healthier and hopefully longer. When we look at the 59% that are obese, if we can bring those dogs down to healthy weight, they’re going to live at least three years longer than their overweight peers. So we’re giving them three years and that’s real debilitating conditions as they get older, diabetes, organ failure and so forth. Our artificial intelligence can identify the earliest onset from diabetes even before symptoms start to appear. Wow. So if we can get that pet into the vet months or a year earlier for treatment, it might be as simple as changing their food. Got it. Got it. Versus all of the interventional and that dog is in pain when organs start to fail. So we’re going
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to eliminate that pain and we’re going to
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silent toy? We will know and we will recommend to the pet parents that your dog likes this toy not that toy so don’t buy that toy. All right you got to
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promise me one thing you got to promise me when you’re doing your fancy AI stuff for pets you’re gonna make sure these dogs don’t throw tantrums in the back seat like kids do. Could you promise that because that’s going to be a problem with the toys.
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Absolutely. But I can’t promise I can’t promise your your dog saying, hey, mom and dad, can I go next door and see that cute little Bichon? Oh, my gosh, this is going deep.
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And Andy, this is getting sorted. Oh, no. You know, dogs and other animals, they do things behind the scenes that we don’t know in the dark and strange places. We’re going to we have to know everything now. We’re gonna we’re gonna know we’re gonna know. We’re gonna know. It’s too much. Hey, I don’t know if you caught today. Speaking of artificial intelligence with everybody is trying to figure out like I am like, you know, most of the world. It’s exciting, and it’s scary. And it’s, you know, it’s moving very fast. So I was reading about the artificial intelligence companies, the godfathers of these companies, it was a LinkedIn article actually today about having to be responsible for the damage their products do in this new field that everything is moving so fast and it was AI godfathers warn of huge risks, did you see that story today?
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I did not.
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It was suggesting a framework that companies and governments assign a third of their research and development funds to safe and ethical use of their systems and they’re warning that technology could easily go rogue since nobody knows how to reliably align AI behavior with complex values so to that point I notice you’re going to have pet insurance as one of your line items for FidoTech but are you going to, are you doing anything crazy that you could be you know things could go wrong with a dog all of a sudden you know what, wants to leave his parents and tells them I mean come on, anything could go wrong with artificial intelligence, right?
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Yes, it can go wrong. And without getting into details, we’ve taken a hard look at the what could go wrong elements of artificial intelligence with regard to phyto tech solution for the past four or five years.
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Wow.
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So yeah, when you develop a new technology, you really create a new techno-legal environment.
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Got it.
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That didn’t exist. Right.
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That didn’t exist before.
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Right.
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So you have to address those. I was reading, from what I read about your company, no single company currently doing anything comparable, none. Am I clear on that?
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Yeah, there’s no single company, no single company that is taking the Apple approach to delivering the Apple Watch, the iTunes, the software. So in the same way Apple has created an entire new ecosystem around watch, or as they did around the iPhone, we’re taking the same approach. It’s a very holistic hardware, software, and content approach to the entire pet industry. So we’re not selling a pet service, we’re not selling software, we’re selling the experience of a pet parent to know everything about their dog and give the dog the power to become a participating member of the family.
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I’m so excited for you. Hey, look, you owe your wife, you know that, for making you pay attention to the dog bowl, it all starts with her. So if this all works out perfectly, you know, she’s going to be a very important person in this story, correct?
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She reminds me of that.
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I tell you, because you would dare not follow what the wife suggested.
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I would love to give her everything that this is going to read.
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Ah, it’s wonderful. And you were such a smart guy in terms of patents. I’m just curious, and you don’t have to go into all the patents you had before you even thought of this thing. What kind of business were you in prior to now wanting to take over the entire pet industry with artificial intelligence?
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The patent business.
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Ah, very cool.
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I had the largest in the early 2000s at the dot com. I had the largest artificial intelligence patent database and IBM and the patent office were my customers.
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Now I know that’s heavy duty because I would take the newspapers back when and every day check out the new patents that IBM was issuing because they had to announce them in the newspapers and I’d be like, I can’t believe how many patents these people are doing. Anyway, great to meet you.
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Ten thousand a year.
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How many a year?
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You too, Debbie.
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How many a year?
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Ten thousand a year. Ten thousand.
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Amazing. IBM. I know, I know. Alright, so we have to continue some other time. I’m going to follow you, Andy Gibbs, founder and CEO of Fidotek. We’re chatting. Are you still in Arizona right now?
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I am in Arizona.
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Okay, living my life. I hate that about you. You’re living my life. Fidotek.com is where you can find out more and maybe be part of this as an opportunity there. So thank you so much for the insight. Best of luck.
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I appreciate the time. Absolutely.
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Okay, kiddo. Have a great day. Okay, bye now. Okay, bye now. Bye. Whatever you do, don’t give a dog my voice.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
