Ann Arbor, Mich. – Researchers at the University of Michigan are studying how artificial intelligence technology can be used to understand dog communication.
Scientists are developing tools to distinguish whether a dog's bark indicates playfulness or aggression. They also want to gather more information from the dog's voice, such as its age, breed and sex.
“Using speech processing models originally trained on human speech, our research opens a new window on how we can improve speech processing beyond what we've built so far,” said UM's Director Rada Mihalcea. can be leveraged to begin to understand the subtleties of dog barking.” AI Laboratory.
The researchers studied the vocalizations of 74 dogs in different contexts.
Research has found that AI models originally trained on human speech can be used as a starting point for training new systems that target animal communication.
“We still don't know much about the animals that share this world with us,” Mihalcea added. “Advances in AI can be used to revolutionize our understanding of animal communication, and our results suggest that we don't have to start from scratch.”
Mihalcea said their findings show that the sounds and patterns generated by human speech can form the basis for examining and understanding the acoustic patterns of other sounds, including animal sounds.
However, researchers said developing AI to analyze animal vocalizations has been hampered by a lack of publicly available data.
“Soliciting and recording animal vocalizations is logistically very difficult,” said Artem Abzalev, lead author of the study. “They should be recorded passively in the wild or, in the case of domestic pets, with the permission of the owners.”
Scientists were able to reproduce the model of human speech analysis that enabled them to use robust voice-powered technologies that recognize spoken words and speakers.
“These models are able to learn and encode incredibly complex patterns of human language and speech,” Abzalev notes. “We wanted to see if we could take advantage of this ability to understand and interpret dog barks.”
The new research also has important implications for animal welfare, according to the study. Understanding dogs' vocalizations can greatly improve how humans interpret and respond to dogs' needs, increase their care and prevent dangerous situations.