Google Develops AI to Communicate with Dolphins
Google, in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Wild Dolphin Project, has made significant progress in developing an artificial intelligence designed to decode dolphin communication and potentially even ‘speak’ it. The new model, called DolphinGemma, was trained on tens of thousands of hours of acoustic recordings of Stenella frontalis dolphins, known for communicating through clicks, whistles, and rapid sequences of sounds called burst pulses.
Dolphins use these complex sound sequences during play, courtship, and sometimes confrontations. Dr. Thad Starner, an AI researcher with Google and Georgia Tech, expressed his excitement about the model’s capabilities, saying, “When I first heard the sounds generated by the model, I danced around the room. For years, I tried to produce burst pulses with regular software and couldn’t do it. But the model created them on its own – no lines of code – just from what it learned from the data.”
Unlike earlier approaches that attempted to translate dolphin sounds into human words, DolphinGemma identifies and constructs sound patterns that mimic dolphin language. The system aims to learn to associate specific sound patterns with specific contexts, such as playing with a friend, encountering a new object, or facing off in a conflict.
Developing CHAT Technology
The team is also developing technology called CHAT: a wearable audio system for divers that generates real-time AI-produced ‘dolphin’ sounds. Researchers play a new sound while pointing to an object – such as a toy or sea plant – and observe whether dolphins repeat or consistently react to the sound. Dr. Denise Herzing, founder of the project, explained, “The goal is to see if dolphins can learn or recognize a new word. Instead of spending 150 years manually analyzing all the recordings, the model allows us to detect patterns in days.”
Understanding Dolphin Communication
While some experts caution that dolphins may not use actual ‘words’ like humans, the project’s findings could still provide valuable insights into dolphin cognitive abilities. Consistent responses to new sounds could demonstrate memory, learning, attention, and even basic communication.
This development is part of a broader effort to communicate with animals using AI. Other projects include the Earth Species Project, which focuses on crows, and CETI, which is working to decode sperm whale communication. While having a true ‘conversation’ with dolphins may be unlikely, the attempt to understand their language could transform our view of our place in the animal kingdom.
