Researchers Use AI to Decode Dolphin Sounds
Denise Herzing's Wild Dolphin Project is applying artificial intelligence to years of dolphin audio and video to find patterns in their communication.
Updated on Nov. 5, 2026 in Wildlife
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Denise Herzing, founder and director of the Wild Dolphin Project, is using AI to analyze dolphin audio and video footage gathered over decades. Her team has also tested a two-way approach, playing dolphin sounds through an underwater wearable computer while observing the animals' responses.
Why it matters
The effort aims to move beyond describing animal sounds toward understanding how dolphins may communicate with one another and with people. Researchers have identified patterns in dolphin communication but have not yet achieved a two-way conversation.
The project has run for about 40 years, beginning with a 1985 study of Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas. The team has used sounds linked to a scarf and sargassum seaweed in trials, but the results remain preliminary.
The players
Denise Herzing
Herzing is a researcher and the founder and director of the Wild Dolphin Project, known for her long-term study of Atlantic spotted dolphins.
Wild Dolphin Project
The Wild Dolphin Project is a research organization studying dolphin behavior and communication through decades of field observation.
Georgia Tech
Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university collaborating on the AI analysis of dolphin recordings.
Google DeepMind
Google DeepMind is an artificial intelligence research lab working with the project to identify patterns in dolphin audio.
The details
Herzing's team works with scientists at Georgia Tech and Google DeepMind to analyze the recordings. In controlled interactions, one researcher plays a sound while another presents an item, and the team watches how the dolphins respond.
Timeline
1985: Herzing first begins studying dolphin communication in the Bahamas.
Culture Shift
The AI analysis extends the Wild Dolphin Project's four-decade study of Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas into computational territory. It reflects a broader move in animal research from observation alone toward machine-assisted pattern detection.
Readers interested in animal behavior can follow how AI tools are being applied to field research on wild species. The work shows how long-term observation data can be reused as new analytic methods emerge.
The takeaway
Long-term field data can become far more valuable when paired with new analytic tools. Researchers studying animal communication may find that existing archives hold patterns that were not visible when the footage was first collected.
Further reading
For related coverage, explore more Wildlife stories on the site.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Wired.
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