We Will Be Able To Translate Dog Barking Very Soon
We think we know our dogs and their mannerisms but imagine being able to understand their barks and noises that they make? And while we joke about being able to text our dogs (pets) while we’re away, researchers at the University of Michigan and the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics in Puebla, Mexico, we might actually be able to understand our dog’s communication in the future. In plain English, we will be able to translate dog barking very soon.
Wild, right?! And if you’re a dog lover like me this is HUGE! I can’t imagine being able to communicate with my dog, Khaleesi.
Also, because Khaleesi is a blue nose Pitbull who is subjected to tons of misconceptions, even though I see a completely different side of her. It’d be nice for this research to lead to a better understanding and appreciation for dogs like mine.
These researchers are exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can interpret dog vocalizations. The study is meant to focus on understanding and interpreting a dog’s vocalizations using AI. They’re on a mission to decipher our pets’ language from their playful or aggressive barks while considering their characteristics like their age, breed, and sex of the dog.
How are they even doing this?
They’ve taken 74 dogs, Chihuahuas, French Poodles, and Schnauzers, from all over Mexico and they’ve exposed them to different situations to trigger all sorts of different sounds that they make and recording them. They keep the dogs in their own homes, so they don’t change their environment in order to get their natural response. They use this AI model called Wav2Vec2, which originally was made to understand human speech but they’ve trained it with dog soundbites they collected, in order to teach it to tell the dogs apart, figure out which breed, and even their gender. And apparently this AI model can actually pick out individual dogs by their barks 50% of the time. There’s a lot more involved but it seems like the AI model has been able to tell what was up with different types of barking, depending on what was triggering it.
Imagine what this could do for dog training, their healthcare, or honestly just being able to understand our dogs a lot better would be amazing! This could also help dogs in need, those sick, lost or need to be adopted, and change how people see “aggressive” breeds who are misunderstood.
As of right now, researchers are only focused on dogs but they’re also considering extending this to other species like birds and marine mammals, but that’s most likely way down the road. For now, let’s see how soon we’ll be able to understand our dogs.
Source: Psy Post
