Project CETI

Project CETI is an international initiative to understand the acoustic communication of sperm whales using advances in artificial intelligence.^[1][2] The project has an interdisciplinary scientific board including marine biologists, artificial intelligence researchers, roboticists, theoretical computer scientists, and linguists. Its name, Cetacean Translation Initiative,^[3] is a reference to the SETI Institute.^[4] The project has a base on the island of Dominica where recordings are being collected.^[5] Off the coast of Alaska, CETI succeeded in the first intentional human-whale interaction in humpback whale "language".^[6][7] The organization has been selected as a TED Audacious Project.^[8] CETI researchers have identified 156 distinct codas and their basic components, a "sperm whale phonetic alphabet" much like phonemes.^[9]

In the sperm whale's head, the organs above the jaw are devoted to sound generation

Dominica is an island nation in the Eastern Caribbean Sea located between Guadeloupe and Martinique

Project CETI

Founded	2020
Type	Non-profit
Focus	Understanding the communication of sperm whales
Fields	Marine Biology, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Linguistics
Lead	David Gruber
Website	www.projectceti.org

See also

• Whale sound
• Human–animal communication
• Animal cognition
• Animal communication
• Interspecies communication
• Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence