Could We Speak to Dolphins? A Promising LLM Makes That a Possibility

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Dolphins have a broad vocabulary. They vocalize with whistles, clicks and “burst pulses.”This varied communication makes it challenging for scientists to decode dolphin speech. Artificial intelligence can help researchers process audio and find the slight patterns that human ears may not be able to identify. Reporter Melissa Hobson took a look at DolphinGemma, a large language model created by Google in collaboration with the Wild Dolphin Project and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The project seeks to unravel the clicks from the whistles and to understand what dolphins chat about under the waves. Recommended reading: Read our article about DolphinGemma: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-ai-let-us-chat-with-dolphins/ Watch our video about the project: https://www.tiktok.com/@scientificamerican/video/7499862659072871723 Keep up with Hobson’s reporting: http://www.melissahobson.co.uk/ Tell us what you think! Take our survey for the chance to win some SciAm swag! http://sciencequickly.com/survey E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was co-hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Here's the truth about AI.
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0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people.
0:41.8	For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.
0:56.9	There are a few animals that pretty much everyone likes.
1:00.5	Fluffy pandas, cute kittens, real tigers.
1:04.0	Dolphins would probably make the list for most folks, too.
1:08.9	They're intelligent, playful, and have those permanent goofy grins on their faces.
1:11.5	Watching them dart around in the water kind of makes you wonder, what are those guys thinking? It's a question many scientists have asked,
1:17.1	but could we actually find out? And what if we could even talk back? Freelance ocean writer
1:23.2	Melissa Hobson has been looking into a new project that's been making a big splash, sorry, in the media.
1:29.6	It's being billed as the first large language model, or LLM, for dolphin vocalizations.
1:36.2	Could this new tech allow us to actually communicate with dolphins?
1:40.7	Here's Melissa to share what she's learned.
2:00.0	Okay. Here's Melissa to share what she's learned. When you dip your head under the waves at the beach, the water muffles the noise around you and everything goes quiet for a moment. People often assume
2:01.6	that means the ocean is silent, but that's really not true. Underwater habitats are actually
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