GOOGLE IS DECODING DOLPHIN COMMUNICATION WITH AI AND MAY EVEN RESPOND
Dolphins are amazing animals, and our understanding of their true nature only grows as we discover more about them. The marine mammals are known for their sophisticated social habits and intellect. They use distinctive clicks and whistles to communicate, and there is even evidence that they may be able to identify their own "names." We may now be able to speak to dolphins in their tongue because of developments in artificial intelligence. Dolphin Gemma is a large language model (LLM) that Google is currently working on for dolphin vocalisations.
The innovative study is being conducted in partnership with the nonprofit Wild Dolphin Project (WDP) and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The LLM was trained using a plethora of acoustic data collected by the WDP team during their more than 40 years of research on Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis). The model was then instructed to produce "dolphin-like" sound sequences by Google and Georgia Tech. They were able to mimic the quick clicks dolphins make when they are near one another or during intense social situations, such as fighting.
The team's current objective is to determine whether AI can assist in finishing vocalisation sequences, similar to how Google completes your sentence while you type. WDP founder Denise Herzing says that without AI, “it would take some 150 years to go through all the data and try to pull out those patterns.”
Using AI analysis isn’t just faster; it could also help us spot patterns that researchers might miss. If the AI consistently produces the same results, it might show a pattern. Researchers can then look at WDP’s video data to see what the dolphins are doing when they make certain sounds, like whether they’re playing, fighting, or signalling danger to their pod.
Additionally, the team aims to observe how dolphins react to novel AI-generated "words" that resemble dolphin speech. The researchers intend to employ a wearable device called CHAT (cetacean hearing augmented telemetry), created by Georgia Tech, which enables them to "talk" and listen simultaneously. One unit connected to the diver's forearm plays noises that are picked up by a gadget worn on their chest.
When swimming alongside a group of dolphins, two divers equipped with the CHAT gadget will use the invented sound to "ask for" and pass an object between them. A dolphin will be rewarded by the researcher by being given seagrass if it repeats the call. “By demonstrating the system between humans, researchers hope the naturally curious dolphins will learn to mimic the whistles to request these items,” explains Google. “Eventually, as more of the dolphins’ natural sounds are understood, they can also be added to the system.”
