Ever wondered what your pet is trying to tell you? Perhaps they need more food, a strange man carrying letters is outside the door, or little Timmy has fallen down the well? Who knows?
Well, thanks to a Chinese tech company, we could learn the answer as they explore whether it's possible to translate animal sounds into voice.
Baidu, a tech company in China and the owner of the country's equivalent to Google, has recently filed a patent this week with the China National Intellectual Property Administration for an AI system that would be used to convert animal sounds into human language.
This isn't the first time scientists, or even tech giants, have attempted to decode animal communication. However, Baidu's patent is the latest effort in using AI to accomplish that goal.
Ever wondered what your cat is trying to tell you? (Getty Stock Images)
According to the patent, the new AI system will be used to collect animal data such as, vocal sounds, behavioural patterns, and physiological signals, which will be analysed by a powerful-AI system in order to understand the animal's emotional state.
The data collected would then be mapped to semantic meanings and translated into human language to better improve ‘the accuracy and efficiency of cross-species communication', Baidu writes in the patent document.
Baidu further states that the AI translation system is ‘still in the research stage', however, a spokesperson for the company has said that there is a ‘lot of interest in the filing' (via Sky News).
Previous attempts to understand animals have caused videos to go viral on YouTube, such as videos of dogs using buttons on hexagonal mats, or Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) boards as a way to communicate with their owners.
While being able to understand your dogs needs through a series of buttons is undoubtedly cool, let's face it, it's not as awesome as actually being able to speak to them.
And there's some scientific backing behind the idea that dogs may be able to distinguish languages.
What are they talking about? (Getty stock images)
A 2022 study from Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary found that dogs' brain activity varied depending on whether a familiar language was spoken – in this case, the 18 dogs involved in the study were able to tell the difference between Spanish and Hungarian.
A even more surprising discovery was that the difference was greater in older dogs as well as dogs with a long nose. Laura Cuaya, one of the study's authors, theorised that the older dogs had more time listening to their owners, whereas the long-nosed dogs have a particular head shape similar to sheepdogs, who often have to listen to the shepherd's commands.
But it's not just household pets that scientists are trying to understand either as international researchers at Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) have been using statistical analysis and AI in an attempt to decipher how sperm whales communicate, which revealed that they actually had their own ‘phonetic alphabet'.
