Google is leveraging artificial intelligence to decode dolphin communication, aiming to facilitate future interactions between humans and these intelligent marine mammals.
Google is embarking on an ambitious project to harness artificial intelligence (AI) in order to study dolphin communication, with the ultimate goal of enabling humans to converse with these highly intelligent creatures.
Dolphins have long been celebrated for their cognitive abilities, emotional depth, and social interactions with humans. In collaboration with researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP), a Florida-based non-profit organization that has dedicated over 40 years to studying and recording dolphin sounds, Google is developing a new AI model named DolphinGemma.
The Wild Dolphin Project has spent decades correlating various dolphin sounds with specific behavioral contexts. For example, signature whistles are often used by mothers to reunite with their calves, while burst pulse “squawks” are typically observed during conflicts among dolphins. Additionally, “click” sounds are frequently employed during courtship or when dolphins are chasing sharks, according to a blog post from Google detailing the project.
DolphinGemma builds upon Google’s existing AI lightweight open model, known as Gemma, and is designed to analyze the extensive library of recordings collected by WDP. The model aims to detect patterns, structures, and even potential meanings behind dolphin vocalizations. Over time, DolphinGemma will categorize these sounds into groupings that resemble words, sentences, or expressions in human language.
According to Google, the model’s ability to identify recurring sound patterns, clusters, and reliable sequences will assist researchers in uncovering hidden structures and meanings within dolphin communication. This task, which previously required significant human effort, could be streamlined through the use of AI.
Eventually, the patterns identified by DolphinGemma, combined with synthetic sounds created by researchers to refer to objects that dolphins enjoy interacting with, may lead to the establishment of a shared vocabulary for interactive communication between humans and dolphins.
To ensure high-quality sound recordings of dolphin vocalizations, DolphinGemma utilizes audio recording technology from Google’s Pixel phones. This technology is capable of isolating dolphin clicks and whistles from background noise, such as waves, boat engines, or underwater static. Clean audio is essential for AI models like DolphinGemma, as noisy data can hinder the AI’s ability to learn and analyze effectively.
Google plans to release DolphinGemma as an open model this summer, allowing researchers worldwide to utilize and adapt it for their own studies. While the model is initially trained on Atlantic spotted dolphins, it has the potential to assist in the study of other dolphin species, such as bottlenose or spinner dolphins, with some adjustments.
By providing tools like DolphinGemma, Google aims to empower researchers globally to explore their own acoustic datasets, accelerate the search for patterns, and collectively enhance our understanding of these remarkable marine mammals.
Source: Original article