Summary
- Google’s DolphinGemma AI model aims to decipher and predict patterns in dolphin sounds for better understanding of their communication.
- The Wild Dolphin Project’s CHAT system utilizes Pixel phones for computing, paving the way for future advancements in dolphin research.
- Dr. Denise Herzing believes that DolphinGemma could reveal hidden structures in dolphins’ communication, potentially leading to human-dolphin interaction.
We’re all used to the now-mundane things AI can do, from generating images to whipping up spreadsheets and presentations. The more exciting AI frontier today is in things that wouldn’t be possible or wouldn’t be feasible without the use of AI. For example: Google’s AI and hardware are being used in research by Georgia Tech and the Wild Dolphin Project that aims to further our understanding of dolphin communication and social interaction — and even to potentially allow humans to communicate with dolphins.
Dolphins make various sounds that communicate information to each other, including particular whistles that function as unique identifiers for individual dolphins, similar to the way humans refer to each other by name. The Wild Dolphin Project has been studying this communication in wild Atlantic spotted dolphins for 40 years.
In a blog post for National Dolphin Day, Google shared how it’s lending its expertise to the project. Google’s created an AI model called DolphinGemma, trained on the World Dolphin Project’s data to identify and eventually predict patterns in the sounds dolphins make. DolphinGemma is also being used to develop synthetic dolphin-like sounds that researchers hope they can teach dolphins to associate with “specific objects the dolphins enjoy,” like seagrass and scarves.
To accomplish this, the Wild Dolphin Project developed the Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry system (CHAT). New models of CHAT use Pixel phones for computing; the current iteration runs on a Pixel 6, and the Project is set to roll out a Pixel 9-based model later this year. That upcoming build will use the Pixel 9’s speakers and microphones, as well as on-device AI processing to run DolphinGemma.
Using AI to decipher and generate dolphin ‘speech’
Google says that use of its DolphinGemma AI model could “help researchers uncover hidden structures and potential meanings within the dolphins’ natural communication — a task previously requiring immense human effort.” Dr. Denise Herzing of the Wild Dolphin Project says the AI tool will “give us a really good look at if there are pattern subtleties that humans can’t pick out,” adding with a laugh that “the goal would be to someday speak dolphin.”
The Wild Dolphin Project is beginning to deploy DolphinGemma in the field this year. When we’ll see Dolphin as an option in Google Translate is anyone’s guess.
