Tech company exploring how AI can translate pet sounds into words

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Want to understand why your canine companion is barking?

Feel like you’re missing out when your feline friend begins to meow?

A Chinese tech company is hoping that artificial intelligence can help decipher dog and cat sounds and turn those sounds into human language.

A patent was filed by Baidu, the owner of China’s largest search engine, with the China National Intellectual Property Administration, Britain’s Sky News reports.

The filing was published publicly on Tuesday.

The company said it is exploring a process that can interpret “voice, body language, behavioural changes and other biological signs” of pets. That information would then be run through an AI program to analyze and recognize the animal’s emotional state.

Baidu’s filing said the information gathered could be translated into language and potentially improve “the accuracy and efficiency of cross-species communication.”

A Baidu spokesperson said there is a “lot of interest in the filing,” but cautioned the animal translator is “still in the research stage.”

“As an AI company, we constantly look to apply new technologies across diverse use cases,” the company told the South China Morning Post.

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According to Baidu, the proposed technology would use machine learning where large data sets are fed into computers, analyze voice and movement characteristics through neural networks known as deep learning, and natural language processing by way of computational approaches to the analysis and synthesis of natural language and speech.

A Shanghai lawyer said granting a patent could take the Chinese government at least a year in a best-case scenario.

“Three years is also normal,” said You Yunting, a senior partner at Shanghai Debund Law Firm. “In more complex cases, four or five years is possible.”