Jamie McLaughlin, a vice chair of the ABA International Animal Law Committee

While AI's capabilities to translate animal languages are still in their nascent phase, some AI researchers are already collaborating with legal experts.

Project CETI -- Cetacean Translation Initiation -- is a listening project bringing together scientists in biology, linguistics and robotics using machine learning to translate sperm whales' clicks and songs. Well aware of potential legal and ethical issues, CETI collaborates with the MOTH Program, which researches the legal impact of AI-assisted studies of animal communication.

Over decades of work, Project CETI has found sperm whales have conscious thoughts and can plan for the future while experiencing a range of emotions, says MOTH Program's Rodríguez-Garavito, author of "What If We Understood What Animals Are Saying? The Legal Impact Of AI-assisted Studies of Animal Communication," published in Ecology Law Quarterly in May.

For instance, chronic vessel noise can compromise whales' ability to detect, recognize or understand each other's sounds regarding feeding, navigation and mating -- communication with potentially grave consequences, says Ashley Nemeth, supervising attorney at the MOTH Program.

But could translated whale communications be admitted as evidence?

"It's hard not to give a stereotypically lawyerly answer that 'it depends,'" says MOTH's Nemeth.

Reddy agrees. "If we are able to understand how an animal who has been harmed, that could be really meaningful in terms of how a judge or jury sees and appreciates what justice for that animal might mean," he says.

While potentially years away, that type of information would be assessed by the court like any other scientific evidence, sources say.

"We need to answer this fundamental scientific question: 'Is the science able to meet our traditional Daubert standard?'" asks Hessler. "How do we know when we have enough data that has been peer reviewed and is substantial enough to count as expert understanding?"

And how the AI translator is trained and by whom would be important to understand its bias, McLaughlin says.

"International shipping companies, for example, might want to keep their boat speeds and not want the expense of refitting with quieter engines," she says. "They might put forth other data that says, 'That's not what these whales are saying.'

"It's the person with the better resources that wins," she adds.