Denise Herzing’s team uses AI to study dolphin communication

Denise Herzing, founder and director of the Wild Dolphin Project, is using AI to find patterns in dolphin communication from hours of audio and video recordings. The team is working with scientists at Georgia Tech and Google DeepMind to give structure to that language, without being able to translate it yet. Herzing presented the information, according to Wired.

The group is also testing possible two-way communication with an underwater wearable computer that can play sounds associated with objects such as a scarf and habitat elements such as sargassum. One challenge is distinguishing mimicry from understanding: dolphins may reproduce a sound without understanding its function. Herzing says a conversation remains a long way off, and researchers still need to understand what these patterns mean within dolphin culture.