While most commercial pet translator apps are largely created with entertainment in mind, Hangzhou-based tech startup Meng Xiaoyi claims that its new pet translator is the real deal! As long as the pet is wearing the device around its neck, the translator can allegedly recognize vocalizations, emotions, and behavioral language with an accuracy rate approaching 95%.

Meng Xiaoyi launched preorders for its AI-powered pet translator earlier this month, and it has already announced that over 10,000 units have been reserved by pet owners eager to finally converse with their beloved animals. Priced at 799 yuan ($118), the device has sparked some controversy on Chinese social media, with some calling it a “human intelligence test” rather than an accurate pet translator.

One of the red flags reported online was that the company’s impressive claims were not supported by actual data. Apart from cute videos of cat meows and dog barks being translated into human speech using colorful bubbles, Meng Xiaoyi didn’t really put out any data on the accuracy of its new device.

According to Meng Xiaoyi, the AI translator was built on Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen (a.k.a. Qwen) large-scale model technology and has accumulated millions of voiceprint data points on pet behavior and language, which apparently allows it to recognize pet vocalizations, emotions, and behavioral language with high accuracy. However, the company hasn’t presented any tests or studies to back up these claims.

To make matters worse, Chinese media reported that Meng Xiaoyi was founded in January of this year, which only made critics more skeptical. The AI translator did quickly secure $1 million in seed funding, indicating that the market is also betting on the future of the industry, but that is no guarantee of its effectiveness.