China: Have you ever wished you could comprehend what your kitty is trying to say to you? A Chinese technology company is looking into whether artificial intelligence can be used to convert those enigmatic purrs into human speech.
According to a trademark report released this week, Baidu, the owner of China’s largest search engine, has filed a trademark with the Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration. The program would be designed to transfer dog vocalizations into human speech.
Scientists have long made attempts to decode animal communication, and Baidu’s patent is the most recent attempt to use AI to do so.
According to the document, the system will gather animal data, including vocal sounds, behavioral patterns, and physiological signals, before performing an AI-powered analysis to determine the animal’s emotional state.
The emotional states would then be mapped to semantic meanings and translates into human language.
According to Baidu, the system could help “adequately deepen the understanding and transmission of emotions between animals and people, thereby enhancing the effectiveness and precision of cross-species communication.”
When asked how soon the company could turn the patent into a product, a Baidu spokesperson said,” There has been a lot of interest in the filing of our patent application. It is still in the research phase at the moment.
Following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, Baidu was one of the first major Chinese companies to make significant investments in AI.
Ernie 4.5 Turbo, its most recent AI model, was unveiled last month, and it claimed it met the best standards in the field in several benchmark tests. In the face of fierce competition, the Ernie chatbot has struggled to gain popularity.
Outside of China, a number of efforts are being made to interpret what animals want to say.
Since 2020, international researchers at Project CETI ( Cetacean Translation Initiative ) have been studying sperm whale communication using statistical analysis and AI. Reid Hoffman, a non-profit founded in 2017, has also pledged to use AI to decode animal communication.
Late on Wednesday, local media reports about Baidu’s patent application sparked discussion on Chinese social media platforms.
Some were optimistic about the possibility of eventually becoming more knowledgeable about their pets, but others were skeptical.
While it sounds impressive, a user on Weibo commented,” We’ll need to see how it performs in real-world applications.” Reuters