Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Google’s DeepMind is diving into marine science with a new AI model designed to help researchers decode dolphin communication.
What Happened: Earlier this week, Google DeepMind introduced DolphinGemma, an AI model trained to generate and interpret dolphin-like vocalizations.
Built on Google’s open-source Gemma architecture, DolphinGemma was developed in collaboration with the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP), a nonprofit that studies Atlantic spotted dolphins in their natural habitat.
Using data collected from decades of dolphin field recordings, the model can produce sequences that mimic real dolphin sounds.
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Google says DolphinGemma is efficient enough to run on mobile devices, and WDP plans to test it on the Pixel 9 smartphone. The team previously used a Pixel 6 to collect and analyze dolphin vocalizations, but the Pixel 9 will allow simultaneous execution of AI models and audio-matching algorithms in the field.
The goal is to create a system capable of generating synthetic dolphin vocalizations and listening for a matching “reply,” potentially paving the way for two-way interaction with dolphins.
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Why It’s Important: Previously, a 2024 Nature report highlighted that AI-powered research has revealed that African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) and common marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus) use unique “names” for their peers.
Scientists are also applying machine learning to decode the vocalizations of crows.
Despite recent advances, experts caution that an animal equivalent of Google Translate is still a long way off. According to marine biologist David Gruber, founder of the Cetacean Translation Initiative (CETI), the impressive progress in AI language models stems largely from access to massive datasets where the meanings of human language are already well-established.
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