Groundbreaking AI technology has been brought in to help University of Newcastle researchers save Lake Macquarie's last known green and golden bell frog population.
The Eraring community investment fund will help the research team expand the capability of their biodiversity acoustic monitoring system known as Biomon.
The existing system has onboard species identification capability that can relay detections of common birds and frogs to citizen scientists in real time for checking.
But with the support of Origin and local firm Saphi Engineering, the university plans to extend its capacity to recognise the sounds of cryptic and threatened species using a cutting-edge AI method commonly referred to as Zeroshot learning.
Unlike normal AI methods that require thousands of labelled files of the vocalisation of a target species to train a deep learning model, Zeroshot learning uses semantics - text descriptions of the call such as pitch, tone, pattern of call - to allow the AI model to detect a species without labelled data.
This is particularly useful for species where there is often a lack of acoustic data for training AI models.
"There's a whole number of different coordinations of technologies," Saphi Engineering's chief technology officer Eric Johns said.
"At the moment we can see different calls at different times of the day; you can see if it rains, or there might be a lot more calls. It's just a great visual way to see it in action."
Researcher Dr Alex Callen said the technology was a game changer for biodiversity monitoring.
"In the next 12 months we're hoping to optimise Biomon. We are very confident of its detections of green and golden bell frogs at Muddy Lake so that we know that the population is surviving."
The university plans to develop a Zeroshot AI model for recognising the threatened green and golden bell frog and to deploy it to monitor this species in Muddy Lake, which is home to the last remaining population of this threatened species in the Lake Macquarie Local Government Area.
The $5 million Eraring community investment fund was launched in 2023 and since then has committed $1.5 million to 47 local projects.
Next funding round opens 10 August 2026; further details can be found at originenergy.com.au/eraring
