Science · 2026-11-05

AI Wants to Learn to Speak Dolphin

Researcher Denise Herzing is using AI to find patterns in dolphin sounds and may eventually try to hold a two-way conversation with them.

✨ Where the idea came from

Denise Herzing, founder and director of the Wild Dolphin Project, started wondering how dolphins communicate during a 1985 trip to the Bahamas, where she was studying Atlantic spotted dolphins and heard their distinctive clicks and whistles.

Herzing said the answer took more than 40 years to reach. She told the audience at the WIRED World Fair that AI is finally allowing her to make sense of what dolphins are saying.

📌 What the researchers are doing

The team has gathered countless hours of video and audio footage of dolphins. It is now working with scientists at Georgia Tech and with Google DeepMind to give structure to dolphin language. The language has not been fully translated yet, but patterns are starting to emerge.

Herzing said: "With AI, we can find patterns." She called it a powerful new tool and said she had personally been waiting for it.

🔹 An attempt at simple dialogue

The researchers have already tried two-way communication. They use an underwater wearable computer that plays dolphin sounds. For example, one sound indicates a scarf, and another indicates sargassum, a type of seaweed.

Two researchers work as a pair: one plays a sound, such as the one for a scarf, while the other plays with that object. The team then observes how the dolphins respond.

🔸 The main difficulty

It is hard to tell when a dolphin is simply mimicking a sound and when it actually understands its meaning. Herzing said: "Even though we had these whistles and are labeling toys, there's a big difference between mimicking and understanding the function. That's hard to do in the wild."

She believes that working in a sanctuary or a more controlled environment might help researchers tell the difference.

💬 Why a conversation is still far off

Humans have made fairly good progress in understanding dolphin social hierarchies and behavior. But a real conversation requires much more work. Herzing said: "We might have the data and the structure, but what does it mean in dolphin culture?" She sees that as a separate exploration.

Herzing also said the research could help people understand themselves and their relationship with the planet better. When she asks people what they think dolphins would say to us, the most common answer is roughly: "Why are you messing up our ocean?" She said this shows how we think about the world.

Sources: 🔗 WIRED — AI