CALL A PET gives shelter animals AI voices — and lets them pick their humans

German animal shelters were at capacity, and the German Animal Welfare Federation (Deutscher Tierschutzbund) blamed a mismatch between what people pick and what they get: an Appinio survey from September 2025 found that 96 percent of respondents said appearance matters when choosing a pet. Beautiful fur and big eyes reveal nothing about whether an animal is fearful, lively or affectionate, so many adoptions fail and animals return to already-overcrowded shelters.

Let shelter animals speak for themselves: AI voices trained on real character profiles run a phone hotline that matches adopters by personality, not appearance.

With agency Philipp und Keuntje, the federation launched 'CALL A PET' on October 4, 2025, World Animal Day. Caretakers at the Mölln animal shelter wrote detailed character profiles — videos, photos, notes and voice messages — for dog Hector, dog Joker and cat Simon, and AI agents were trained on them, with ElevenLabs giving each animal its own characteristic voice. Adopters call the hotline and talk to the animal itself; the system compares their answers against strict parameters, and only when human and animal seem compatible do they meet at the shelter.

The hotline inverted the adoption process — instead of a human scanning cages, the animal interviews the caller, and the pre-sorted shortlist goes to the shelter's caretakers. The campaign launched with social media and influencers behind it, and the jury of the 30th Annual Webby Awards named CALL A PET the 2026 winner for Best Use of AI and Machine Learning.

German animal shelters were at capacity, and the German Animal Welfare Federation (Deutscher Tierschutzbund) blamed a mismatch between what people pick and what they get: an Appinio survey from September 2025 found that 96 percent of respondents said appearance was important when choosing a pet. Beautiful fur and big eyes reveal nothing about whether an animal is fearful, lively or affectionate, so many adoptions fail and animals return to shelters that are already full.

With agency Philipp und Keuntje, the federation launched 'CALL A PET' on October 4, 2025, World Animal Day. Caretakers at the Mölln animal shelter wrote detailed character profiles — videos, photos, notes and voice messages — for dog Hector, dog Joker and cat Simon. AI agents were trained on those profiles, and ElevenLabs gave each animal its own age-appropriate voice, so callers could talk to the animal itself and hear what it was really like.

The hotline flipped the adoption process: instead of a human scanning cages by appearance, the animal interviews the caller. The system checks the caller's answers against strict parameters built from the caretakers' profiles, and only when human and animal seem compatible do they arrange a meeting at the shelter — the pre-sorted shortlist then goes back to the caretakers. The campaign launched with a social media push and influencers, and the animals speak German best while still responding to other languages.

The jury of the 30th Annual Webby Awards named CALL A PET the 2026 winner for Best Use of AI and Machine Learning, and the federation framed the technology not as a gimmick but as a practical answer to a real problem: helping people get to know an animal's personality before they commit to it.

It solves the documented cause of failed adoptions — choosing by appearance — rather than just making shelters look friendlier.

The character profiles come from caretakers who know each animal, so the AI voices carry real detail instead of invented pet personalities.

Putting the animal on the phone makes the adopter do the work of listening, which filters for genuine interest before anyone visits the shelter.

A working hotline gave the campaign a tangible object — something journalists, influencers and potential adopters could try themselves.

Give the overlooked party a voice instead of shouting louder about them: when a shelter animal can describe its own character, the whole adoption conversation stops being about looks.

CALL A PET went live on October 4, 2025, with the hotline numbers for Hector, Joker and Simon published in the press release and the bots also testable online at callapet.de, and it was accompanied by social media and influencer support. In April 2026 the 30th Annual Webby Awards gave the campaign its Best Use of AI and Machine Learning award. The federation's spokesperson framed the goal as lasting rather than one-off: if AI helps people get to know shelter animals before adoption, fewer animals are taken on impulse and then returned, which is the pressure keeping German shelters at capacity.