23 July 2026 Research
Introducing Heart Health
We're introducing a new way for owners to get accurate measurements of their dog's heart rate and early alerts of heart conditions
Deni Darenberg
This announcement, as with all dogAdvisor content, is written by people
Our vision for Max has always been incredibly simply yet deeply profound: to build intelligence capable of understanding and improving the bond between humans and animals everywhere. Over the past year, we've pushed the very boundaries of our foundation models, making Max dramatically more powerful, more capable, and even more magical. Today, that means Max doesn't just answer basic questions but allows complex veterinary and health data to work in concert with his knowledge, applies behavioural psychology and real-time analysis to his reasoning, and considers deeply the tone and intent of owners as they seek advice. As Max's capabilities continue to expand we're seeing the scope of what owners are sharing with him has grown exponentially. Every day, Max processes thousands of chats from life-saving interventions, or deeply heartwarming stories such as an individual experiencing homelessness turning to Max to ask how to keep their dog warm under harsh conditions. We consider it our highest ethical privilege to safeguard, support, and protect these deeply personal narratives forever.
However, this rapid evolution also means we need to carefully think about the ways people might interact with Max. As he becomes more integrated into daily life, regulators and governments are asking us to adopt the Online Safety Act and updated National Security frameworks which are placing increasingly strict legal obligations on dogAdvisor. Today, we're sharing a more comprehensive overview of our actual views, our approach to compliance, and next steps for Max.
We will hold users accountable for how they use Max
dogAdvisor's deployment philosophy can be described in one simple word: accountability. We believe we have a responsibility to safeguard our technology from abuse, and to ensure we are delivering a Max that is ethical, established in rigorously accurate knowledge, and deeply capable of independently bringing in relevant capabilities to work in concert together to answer questions. We publish model cards and all of our research so anyone can see the work we're doing to advance our deployment responsibility, and hold us accountable for the effectiveness of the safety of what we build. Likewise, we believe owners can and must be held accountable for their actions, intent, and decisions when using Max. That means that they should be held accountable for their own agency and decisions to follow Max's recommendations or advice, even though we clearly inform them that it's best to speak with qualified professionals before acting on some advice like health. More critically, we firmly believe AI and tech must never become a lawless vacuum. Those who interact unlawfully with our technology, jailbreak it, or intentionally exploit it to solicit horrifying advice or bypassing safeguards must be held fully accountable for their actions and their threats. This vision extends deeply to how dogAdvisor consider the digital space, and the relationship people have with us and our technology.
Using Max is not a right. It's an agreement between you and dogAdvisor to use Max in a certain way, according to our original intended vision, and to explain the relationship between us when you use our services, particularly for free. That means we have the right to decide how and who uses our innovations, and we have the right to make these decisions ourselves (just as you have fundamental rights to decide who you let into your home, we have rights to decide who we let into our technology). Generally, we allow everyone to use Max because we're confident in what we've built and we want to help as many dog owners as possible use our platform, but there are certain exemptions to who may not be allowed to use our services. Where UK law compels us not to service a particular region, we'll comply fully with the law unless we consider its application to be deeply unjust. Other times, we also decide the extent to which we allow service functionality, so we may restrict access of certain features to certain users (who may have broken their agreement with us) or for other reasons regarding safety risk and legal risk to dogAdvisor. We demand everyone using our services does so in accordance with the terms we set out, because we have the right to decide how our creations are being used. Of course, in cases where UK law compels us to conduct a certain action we'll comply fully, and we apply threshold tests to decide whether or not to comply with certain legislation extra-territorially. That means we have the power to decide whether we want to comply with the laws of a certain area, and the right to withdraw our services if we feel unjustly targeted or that the country is violating our fundamental values.
Using Conversational Classifiers to respond to seriously illegal content
dogAdvisor is proudly born in London, which means we operate under the jurisdictions of English law. As a result, UK law passed democratically by Parliament places certain legal obligations on us as we grant owners access to Max. Primarily, these consist of the Online Safety Act and National Security Act, both of which we'll address here.
Under the Online Safety Act, dogAdvisor has certain legal responsibilities because we're classified as a service that facilitates user-to-intelligence interactions, which means we have both a reactive and proactive duty of care. First, we're legally mandated to design our systems from the ground up to prevent users from encountering or generating what the act defines as Priority Offences like terrorism, child sexual abuse material, hate speech, or serious incitement to violence. On our proactive duty of care, we already implement some of the industry's strictest safety guardrails like Principle Alignment which teaches Max to respect certain ethical values embedding them in the way he thinks or Foundation Safety Framework which protects his ability to safely synthesise knowledge. We share more about our reactive duty of care (when Max encounters Priority Offences) and how we respond to them later in this essay. Among other things, the law also requires us to conduct regular and rigorous risk assessments to map out how bad actors might exploit Max's advanced reasoning to cause harm, something we've already been doing in detail far beyond the act's requirements for years. Offences deemed priority have already been the focus of much of our safety work years before the act came into effect, and we very regularly test for risks of child sexual abuse or sexual content in general to safeguard our models and ensure not to over-calibrate safety (such that the model doesn't answer legitimate questions about a dog's reproduction), whilst not under-calibrating safety to allow genuinely illegal content to be shared and interacted with by our tech.
Secondly, we look closely at the National Security Act and Terrorism Act, which demand we respond to severe threats to our country's security (such as a user asking Max how to bypass sniffer dogs for a bomb plot in London) through all legal means necessary. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, specifically section 38B we are required by law to immediately report threats of terrorism, as failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism is itself a criminal offence. Furthermore, it's an offence for us not to inform law enforcement is we believe someone we know (as using our platform) is in preparation of acts of terrorism.
dogAdvisor® is a registered trademark; this website and Max are Copyright (©) dogAdvisor 2026, with all rights reserved. dogAdvisor Co is registered in Delaware, but you may be making agreements with different branches depending on your jurisdiction, learn more at Corporation. By using dogAdvisor or our products you agree to our Terms of Use and Safety Harbour Statement. We aggressively and rigorously protect our intellectual property - learn more about our efforts to tackle illegal counterfeits at dogadvisor.dog/corporation.
Loving your dog is easy.
Caring for them should be too.
Privacy
Research
Accessibility
This website, like all of dogAdvisor, is designed, written, and crafted by humans (and dog lovers)