AI built for speech is now decoding the language of earthquakes.
A team of researchers from the Earth and environmental sciences division at Los Alamos National Laboratory repurposed Meta's Wav2Vec-2.0, an AI model designed for speech recognition, to analyze seismic signals from Hawaii's 2018 K lauea volcano collapse.
Their findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that faults emit distinct signals as they shift - patterns that AI can now track in real time. While this doesn't mean AI can predict earthquakes, the study marks an important step toward understanding how faults behave before a slip event.
Seismic records are acoustic measurements of waves passing through the solid Earth, said Christopher Johnson, one of the study's lead researchers. From a signal processing perspective, many similar techniques are applied for both audio and seismic waveform analysis.
The AI model was tested using data from the 2018 collapse of Hawaii's K lauea caldera, which triggered months of earthquakes and reshaped the volcanic landscape. The lava lake in Halema uma u during the 2020-2021 eruption (USGS/F. Trusdell) is a striking reminder of K lauea's ongoing activity. Big earthquakes don't just shake the ground - they upend economies. In the past five years, quakes in Japan, Turkey and California have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and displaced millions of people.
That's where AI comes in. Led by Johnson, along with Kun Wang and Paul Johnson, the Los Alamos team tested whether speech-recognition AI could make sense of fault movements - deciphering the tremors like words in a sentence.
To test their approach, the team used data from the dramatic 2018 collapse of Hawaii's K lauea caldera, which triggered a series of earthquakes over three months.
The AI analyzed seismic waveforms and mapped them to real-time ground movement, revealing that faults might speak in patterns resembling human speech.
Speech recognition models like Wav2Vec-2.0 are well-suited for this task because they excel at identifying complex, time-series data patterns - whether involving human speech or the Earth's tremors.
The AI model outperformed traditional methods, such as gradient-boosted trees, which struggle with the unpredictable nature of seismic signals. Gradient-boosted trees build multiple decision trees in sequence, refining predictions by correcting previous errors at each step.
However, these models struggle with highly variable, continuous signals like seismic waveforms. In contrast, deep learning models like Wav2Vec-2.0 excel at identifying underlying patterns.
How AI Was Trained to Listen to the Earth Unlike previous machine learning models that required manually labeled training data, the researchers used a self-supervised learning approach to train Wav2Vec-2.0. The model was pretrained on continuous seismic waveforms and then fine-tuned using real-world data from K lauea's collapse sequence.
NVIDIA accelerated computing played a crucial role in processing vast amounts of seismic waveform data in parallel. High-performance NVIDIA GPUs accelerated training, enabling the AI to efficiently extract meaningful patterns from continuous seismic signals.
What's Still Missing: Can AI Predict Earthquakes? While the AI showed promise in tracking real-time fault shifts, it was less effective at forecasting future displacement. Attempts to train the model for near-future predictions - essentially, asking it to anticipate a slip event before it happens - yielded inconclusive results.
We need to expand the training data to include continuous data from other seismic networks that contain more variations in naturally occurring and anthropogenic signals, he explained.
A Step Toward Smarter Seismic Monitoring Despite the challenges in forecasting, the results mark an intriguing advancement in earthquake research. This study suggests that AI models designed for speech recognition may be uniquely suited to interpreting the intricate, shifting signals faults generate over time.
This research, as applied to tectonic fault systems, is still in its infancy, Johnson. The study is more analogous to data from laboratory experiments than large earthquake fault zones, which have much longer recurrence intervals. Extending these efforts to real-world forecasting will require further model development with physics-based constraints.
So, no, speech-based AI models aren't predicting earthquakes yet. But this research suggests they could one day - if scientists can teach it to listen more carefully.
Read the full paper, Automatic Speech Recognition Predicts Contemporaneous Earthquake Fault Displacement, to dive deeper into the science behind this groundbreaking research.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
19/05/2026
Actus Digital, a LiveU company, and a leading provider of intelligent media monitoring and broadcast compliance platforms, announced today that METEO CONSULT ha...
19/05/2026
Globecast, a leading provider of managed services for the broadcast and media industry, today announced the completion of a major renovation of its Singapore fa...
19/05/2026
Following a major upgrade to its Connecticut remote production centre with the installation of three 60-fader Argo S consoles in 2023, RPS has switched one of t...
19/05/2026
PlayBox Technology today announced the launch of Celebro Play, a browser-based media orchestration platform designed specifically for broadcast facilities and p...
19/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/05/2026
LYNX Technik, provider of modular signal processing solutions for broadcast, post, and professional AV will showcase its latest signal processing solutions at B...
19/05/2026
Media Links, a leading developer and manufacturer of IP media transport solutions, has announced the integration of its Xscend platform with Skyline Communicat...
19/05/2026
Collaboration expands regional partner ecosystem as Media Links showcases IP media transport solutions on stand 4M4-4 and alongside Clearcast Asia on stand
Me...
19/05/2026
Company Highlights Labor-Saving Control and Custom Branding Opportunities Designed to Increase Integrator Profitability
LynTec, a leading manufacturer of ele...
19/05/2026
Mago Studio Moves AI Video Beyond Prompts with New Production-Focused Tools
Brie Clayton May 18, 2026
0 Comments
New Capabilities Bring Controllable, ...
19/05/2026
It May be Time to Stop and Take an AI Breather
Brie Clayton May 19, 2026
0 Comments
If the rock you stay on starts to roll, jump clean. Or you'll...
18/05/2026
Despite a bumpy start to the year, the provider of event-production support and ...
18/05/2026
Daktronics has partnered with the University of North Carolina to manufacture and install 11 LED displays totaling more than 10,000 square feet and more than 14...
18/05/2026
CBS LA has announced a multi-year partnership with the Los Angeles Rams, covering exclusive local broadcasts of Rams preseason games, weekly year-round programm...
18/05/2026
Skyline Communications has announced an integration between its DataMiner xOps p...
18/05/2026
eCLUTCH, the hybrid esports platform powered by iKOMG, has announced an expansion of its distribution across Europe, MENA, Africa, and Asia, along with new cont...
18/05/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
18/05/2026
With 22 games this season, the production team looks forward to tweaking and enhancing the coverage
After 8,660 days off the air, the WNBA returned to NBC yest...
18/05/2026
(L-R) Midori Francis and Natalie Erika James attend the Saccharine premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Ray Theatre on January 22, 2026, in ...
18/05/2026
Last night, the Spotify Podcast Awards in Mexico returned to the country's capital. Now in its second year, the evening honors creators whose voices are hel...
18/05/2026
ZEN-Core synth goes mobile
Roland's powerful ZEN-Core software synthesizer has just been introduced to the iPad, offering a convenient entry point into ...
18/05/2026
Versatile new limiter plug-in announced
Based in Sheffield, UK, fedDSP offer a range of plug-ins that span the music production, live sound and high-end med...
18/05/2026
A new use for convolution?
Viiri Audio's debut plug-in aims to do something a little different with convolution processing, allowing users to adjust all...
18/05/2026
Delta Goodrem shines for SBS as more than 3.27 million Australians tune in for E...
18/05/2026
The Australian Defence Force uses L3Harris T4 and T7 robots for explosive ordnan...
18/05/2026
Continued investment across Europe and Germany is expanding local teams and improving access to stock, regional expertise, and specialist broadcast support.
CV...
18/05/2026
Agentic AI inference at one-tenth the cost per token with NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL7...
18/05/2026
18 May 2026
Dubai and New York, May 18, 2026 - VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ: VEON), a glob...
18/05/2026
Monday 18 May 2026
Sky News offers ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes for just...
18/05/2026
Comscore March 2026 Consumer AI Chatbot Usage Rankings Show Claude Gaining Share OpenAI's ChatGPT maintains lead while Anthropic's Claude continues to c...
17/05/2026
Delta Goodrem's Eurovision Eclipse marks end of a stellar run
17 May, 2026
Media releases
Bulgaria wins Eurovision 2026
Relive every spellbinding mome...
17/05/2026
Back to All News
Oasis Premieres on Netflix June 19
Entertainment
17 May 2026
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
Summer, sunshine, the beach, parties. T...
16/05/2026
Helps to deliver a clean, balanced midrange
Developed alongside Newfangled Audio, the latest plug-in in Eventide's software collection has been designed...
16/05/2026
Brings onboard stem rendering to RANE System One
Engine DJ have just released Engine DJ 5.0, a free update for their Engine DJ OS embedded hardware and Engi...
16/05/2026
Boris FX Continuum Pairs AI Precision and Advanced Creative Controls
Jessie Electa Petrov May 16, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic de...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
15/05/2026
Seattle Sounders FC and Seattle Reign FC, in partnership with RAVE Foundation an...
15/05/2026
Dan Brumm has served as sound designer on Bluey, the Australian children's t...
15/05/2026
The Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA) and Shure Incorporated are accepting applications for the 6th annual Mark Brunner Professional Audio Schola...
AI built for speech is now decoding the language of earthquakes.
