DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

Thad Starner

Picured: Thad Starner, Professor, School of Interactive Computing wearing a device intended to communicate with dolphins.

For decades, understanding the clicks, whistles and burst pulses of dolphins has been a scientific frontier. What if we could not only listen to dolphins, but also understand the patterns of their complex communication well enough to generate realistic responses?

Today, on National Dolphin Day, Google, in collaboration with researchers at Georgia Tech and the field research of the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP), is announcing progress on DolphinGemma: a foundational AI model trained to learn the structure of dolphin vocalizations and generate novel dolphin-like sound sequences. This approach in the quest for interspecies communication pushes the boundaries of AI and our potential connection with the marine world.

Read the full story from Google here >>

This story features three Georgia Tech researchers involved with the wild dolphin project.

Dolphins