We all joke about what dogs would say if they could talk. Usually, it involves food, other dogs, or loud complaints about the audacity of squirrels. But your favorite AI chatbot might have some idea as to what your dog is thinking, at least if you ask it right.
No, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude haven’t been trained in canine neurology, exactly. But they can take your descriptions of what your dog just did and spin them into a believable narrative of its thinking. And that’s without reimagining the canine as a human.
Here’s how to get into your dog’s brain
The process is simple, but it does require that you pay attention. You start by describing the behavior in detail. You should put in as much information as possible. Write it up, then ask ChatGPT, “Based on this behavior, what might my dog have been thinking?” Or, if you prefer more flair, “Can you translate this from dog to human?” The AI will do its best, which turns out to be pretty good.
For instance, noticing my dog grunting whenever a specific song plays, I asked ChatGPT about it. The AI speculated that the sound’s frequency may irritate or overstimulate her or that the dog associates it with a particular mood shift in the household. ChatGPT was able to take the available clues and return a model of canine motivation that at least made sense.
There is a certain theatricality to the results. ChatGPT has a way of making even the most absurd dog logic sound charmingly reasonable. When asked about my dog’s habit of taking out the eyes of every toy animal, ChatGPT posited that “the dog may feel uncomfortable eviscerating creatures who can still look at it, and responds to embarrassment in a straightforward, if gruesome way.”
The more you describe, the better it gets. The more specific the prompt, the more convincing the backstory. “My dog barked at a loaf of sourdough left on the counter” yields a different analysis than “My dog barked at the sourdough after trying and failing to reach it, then sulked under a chair for twenty minutes.” In the latter case, ChatGPT might suggest food-related frustration paired with territorial food guarding instincts, compounded by olfactory stimulation and thwarted effort. In other words, the loaf hurt his feelings.
Calling the dog psychologist
To be clear, this is not a diagnostic tool. If your dog is pacing in circles or eating drywall, please call a vet. But if your dog starts barking at the dishwasher only when it’s rinsing, or insists on sitting on the top step but nowhere else, this trick gives you a fun, often startlingly coherent way to make sense of it.
ChatGPT can’t feel what your dog feels, but it can triangulate patterns in how people talk about dogs and how dogs behave. That means when you feed it a scenario, it draws on a mountain of text that includes behavioral studies, Reddit threads, pet blogs, memoirs, training guides, and more.
You don’t need to get poetic. You just need to describe the behavior in context. Include timing, mood, and sequence. “My dog huffed dramatically after I turned off the TV and then walked out of the room backward.” “My dog stares at the fireplace for ten minutes every day at exactly 4:12 p.m.” “My puppy stole a grape, spat it out, and then stood guard over it for two hours.”
Give ChatGPT this material, and then prompt it: “Based on this behavior, what might my dog be thinking?” or “Translate this into my dog’s inner monologue.” Or, if you’re feeling dramatic, “I need a psychological profile for this dog immediately.”
You’ll get answers. Not always correct, but rarely dull. Sometimes they’re deeply emotional. Sometimes they’re arch and ridiculous. No one believes ChatGPT actually knows what dogs are thinking. But it might at least offer some illumination.
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ESchwartzwrites@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
