Marine biologists are using artificial intelligence to analyze and interpret whale communication, a development that is prompting legal scholars at New York University (NYU) Law to consider the implications for animal rights. Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) has made progress in decoding sperm whale sounds, identifying elements similar to human phonetic systems and documenting complex social behaviors, such as coordinated birth events within whale pods.
NYU Law’s More Than Human Life (MOTH) program is examining how these scientific advances might influence legal frameworks concerning animals. The program challenges traditional assumptions about human superiority over other life forms and explores institutional, political, legal, and cultural relationships with animals.
“We’re trying to patch together fragments of existing case law that, if bolstered, if supported with new evidence, could point in the direction that we would like the law to go, which is to weaken the categorical distinction between humans and nonhumans in light of this growing evidence about the intelligence, the complexity of the language, and the sentience and consciousness of many animal species,” said César Rodríguez-Garavito, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law.
Project CETI and MOTH have collaborated on a 2025 paper titled “What if We Understood What Animals Are Saying?: The Legal Impact of AI-Assisted Studies of Animal Communication.” The publication reviews international and U.S. laws related to whales and discusses potential new rights for animals based on emerging scientific findings. Co-authors include Rodríguez-Garavito; Ashley Otilia Nemeth, MOTH senior researcher; David Gruber, marine biologist and CETI Director; and Gašper Beguš from UC-Berkeley.
The United States currently lacks cases granting animals legal personhood or specific rights beyond environmental protections. However, some countries have set precedents: Argentina recognized a chimpanzee named Cecilia as a legal person in 2017; Ecuador’s constitution acknowledges nature’s rights since 2008; Spain recently protected a lake ecosystem as a subject of rights.
Rodríguez-Garavito noted: “The work of legal scholars like us is to try to keep up with science but also to anticipate developments that would impact legal frameworks and norms and rules in the future. So one of the most exciting things about this collaboration [with Project CETI] is that it forces you to think 10, 20, 30 years out.”
He explained that whales are a focus due both to their sophisticated communication systems—now being studied with tools from linguistics and AI—and their symbolic role in environmental advocacy since the 1970s. According to Rodríguez-Garavito: “My hope and expectation is that the boundaries between human rights and what I call ‘more-than-human rights,’ between human rights and rights of nature… will be redrawn incrementally, in the direction of acknowledging the moral and legal worth of non-human animals.”
He suggested that advances in understanding animal languages could eventually allow for more inclusive decision-making processes involving nonhuman perspectives. However, he cautioned about risks associated with these technologies: “We released a separate report proposing a legal protocol…that we think all scientific collectives pursuing this type of AI-assisted studies should follow to anticipate, mitigate, and potentially redress the harms that can be produced through this research.”
Rodríguez-Garavito emphasized both opportunities for empathy-driven protection measures as well as concerns about potential misuse: “We’re hoping…on these technologies being used for good. We are…analyzing and making visible…what could be done if we use these new technologies and new data for good.”
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