With the goal of ‘talking’ to the majestic marine animals, a project to listen to, contextualise and translate the communication of Sperm whales was recently launched by a team of international scientists.  

Called Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), the initiative looks to harness the power of artificial intelligence to interpret clicking sounds, or ‘codas,’ which these whales make to communicate with one another.  

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The researchers have been using natural language processing or NLP, a subfield of artificial intelligence focused on processing written and spoken human language. It will be trained in four billion Sperm whale codas.  

According to the researchers, the plan is to have the AI correlate each sound with a specific context. This feat will take at least five years.   

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If the team achieves these goals, the next step would be to develop and deploy an interactive chatbot, which engages in dialogue with Sperm whales living in the wild.  

Michael Bronstein, lead, machine learning for Project CETI, told Hakai, “If we discover that there is an entire civilisation basically under our nose — maybe it will result in some shift in the way that we treat our environment. And maybe it will result in more respect for the living world.”  

(With inputs from agencies)