AI touchscreen lets Costa Rican capuchins earn bananas and even kiss the screen

Researchers deployed an AI-driven touchscreen in the Taboga Forest Reserve, where 16 wild capuchin monkeys learned to touch the device for banana treats, with some discovering they could lick the screen to receive a reward.

A collaborative project between Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology introduced an AI-powered touchscreen called CapuchinAI into Costa Rica’s Taboga Forest Reserve to study wild capuchin cognition. Using open-source YOLO facial-recognition trained on GoPro footage, the device can spot any capuchin, present a task on a screen, and dispense a banana slice when the animal responds correctly. Field trials showed the system identified individual monkeys with 97% accuracy and that the animals rapidly learned the touch-reward link, with one male, Trompudo, quickly mastering the interaction and others eventually licking the screen to obtain treats.

The hardware, assembled from pine, sealant and 3D-printed parts, runs for eight hours on a portable battery. Researchers are now refining the recognition model with video data from the 16 participants and designing experiments to probe learning, memory and impulse control across individuals. The approach promises a scalable way to monitor primate cognition in natural settings, linking behavioral variation to environmental pressures.