Google Creates DolphinGemma AI Model to Communicate with Dolphins

Dolphins are considered some of the smartest creatures on the planet. They can cooperate, teach each other new skills, and recognize themselves in a mirror. For decades, scientists have been trying to understand the complex set of whistles and clicks that dolphins use to communicate. Researchers may soon be able to make significant progress, thanks to a new open-source AI model from Google and Pixel smartphones.

Image source: Google

In its search for new applications for generative AI, Google is interested in collaborating with the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP), a group of researchers who have been studying the behavior and relationships of Atlantic spotted dolphins since 1985.

One of the main tasks facing the WDP is to analyze the impact of dolphin sounds on their social interactions. Understanding the structure and patterns of dolphin “vocal communication” is necessary to determine whether it reaches the level of a full-fledged language. “We don’t know if animals have words,” says Denise Herzing of the WDP.

Image source: Wild Dolphin Project

Thanks to decades of underwater recordings, researchers have been able to link some basic behaviors to specific sounds. For example, they have identified distinctive whistles that appear to be used as names, allowing two individuals to find each other over long distances. Dolphins also routinely emit sound patterns, called “screams” by scientists, during conflicts.

The WDP’s ultimate goal is to speak dolphin language, if it really exists. That quest has resulted in a massive, heavily labeled dataset that’s too labor-intensive for humans to parse, but Google says is ideal for generative AI.

DolphinGemma’s generative AI model is based on Google’s open-source Gemma AI models. It uses Google’s SoundStream audio technology. The model was trained using the Wild Dolphin project’s acoustic archive. The team hopes that DolphinGemma will help uncover complex patterns that will enable the creation of a common vocabulary.

DolphinGemma works in the same way as human-oriented language models: it receives a request and predicts the next token. The scientists believe that these predicted tokens may be sound sequences that dolphins can understand.

Google developed DolphinGemma with the WDP research approach in mind. Scientists use Pixel phones in the field, which places additional demands on the model. Running AI models on a smartphone is a challenging task due to limited resources. The larger and more capable the model, the more RAM and computing power it requires. DolphinGemma is trained on about 400 million parameters, which is quite a bit compared to typical modern models, which have tens of billions of parameters.

For the past few years, WDP has been using a device created at the Georgia Institute of Technology called CHAT (Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry), which is based on a Pixel 6 smartphone. The team uses CHAT to record, listen to, and synthesize dolphin voices.

Image source: Georgia Institute of Technology

For the 2025 summer research season, Google will provide WDP team members with Pixel 9 smartphones, allowing CHAT to run deep learning models and pattern matching algorithms simultaneously. The scientists do not currently plan to feed DolphinGemma-generated sounds directly to CHAT, meaning both approaches will be used in parallel.

While it’s unlikely that DolphinGemma and the new CHAT will immediately allow people to easily communicate with dolphins, there’s hope that over time the system will provide at least basic interaction. Like other Gemma models, DolphinGemma is an open-source project. Google will make the model publicly available this summer. While DolphinGemma was trained on the sounds of Atlantic spotted dolphins, Google suggests it could be adapted for other cetacean species.

In conclusion, it is difficult to resist quoting an excerpt from Douglas Noël Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

«An important and widely known fact: what seems to be true is not always true. For example, on planet Earth, humans have always believed that they are more intelligent than dolphins because they have achieved so much – invented the wheel, New York, wars, and so on – while dolphins only entertain themselves by tumbling in the water. Dolphins, for their part, have always believed that they are much more intelligent than humans – precisely for this reason.”

And one more quote – from the book “The Dolphin Man” by the famous diver Jacques Mayol:

«What then? What do we want to achieve?

…And I will answer you: we must get rid of our egoism, of this vile monster, which will eventually turn against man and wipe him off the face of the earth to the great benefit of all other living species, and above all the dolphin. We are hypocrites. Man adores dolphins! Yes, for his own personal pleasure, to make vassals, domestic servants, slaves, robots carrying bombs on their backs out of them.

And he is close to it.”