Can dolphins and humans ever hold a real conversation? We’re not quite there yet, but Google just took a big step in that direction.

On National Dolphin Day, Google, along with Georgia Tech and the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP), introduced DolphinGemma—a new artificial intelligence model that could help us better understand how dolphins communicate.

How do scientists know what dolphins are saying?

This research is based on years of close observation. The Wild Dolphin Project has been studying a specific group of Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas since 1985. Researchers track individual dolphins and record what they’re doing when they make certain sounds. For example:

Signature whistles help dolphins identify each other—almost like names.

Click buzzes show up during courtship or when chasing off predators.

Squawks are common during arguments or rough play.

Understanding which dolphin is making the sound and what’s happening around them is key to interpreting their “language.”

By combining CHAT with DolphinGemma, researchers hope to spot when a dolphin mimics these sounds and respond quickly—using just a smartphone. Yes, you read that right: a Google Pixel phone now helps analyze dolphin sounds in real time.

Google plans to share DolphinGemma with the wider research community soon. While it’s been trained on Atlantic spotted dolphins, scientists believe the model could be adapted for other species, like bottlenose dolphins, with some fine-tuning.

Understanding dolphin communication is still a long journey. But tools like DolphinGemma are making it easier to explore whether dolphins have something like a language—and if we might one day be able to chat with them. For now, we’re not fluent in “dolphin,” but thanks to AI, we’re starting to understand the first few phrases.

How AI Helps

Traditionally, decoding these vocalizations took a lot of time and manual work. DolphinGemma speeds that up by finding sound patterns across huge amounts of audio data. It can also generate dolphin-like sounds, helping researchers test how dolphins react to different vocalizations.

It’s like having an assistant that not only listens to dolphin talk but also starts to “speak” it in return.

Dolphins and Technology: A Two-Way Street?
Besides just listening, researchers are also experimenting with communicating back. They’re using a system called CHAT (Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry). This tool creates new, artificial whistles linked to objects dolphins enjoy—like seaweed or floating scarves. The hope is that dolphins will learn to use those whistles to “ask” for things.

By training the AI on decades of dolphin recordings collected by WDP, the model can now start predicting what sound might come next in a dolphin “conversation”—kind of like how chatbots can predict your next word when you’re typing a message.

What is DolphinGemma? Google explained

 that DolphinGemma is an AI model designed to analyze the complex sounds dolphins make—like clicks, whistles, and squawks—and find patterns that humans can’t easily detect. These aren’t just random noises; dolphins use them in social interactions, like calling each other, playing, fighting, or even warning about danger.

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