Excellent article in the Guardian. “Scientists are appealing to birders to limit their use of AI when editing images over fears that it could undermine the credibility of popular citizen science platforms such as iNaturalist and Macaulay Library, which are routinely used in scientific research to monitor species’ habitat range.”
Many of us have seen these images on social media, I’ve often seen them innocently shared as part of a post focused on bird conservation. Having curated Surrey’s iNat program since 2019, I’ve only seen a few observations that were clearly shots of computer screens or TVs, but deep fakes are becoming increasingly sophisticated and harder to detect.
Fortunately the majority of dedicated community scientists out there haven’t bowed to temptation. Especially since we have plenty of cool, unique occurrences to share without having to resort to manufacturing them!
Check out the article here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/20/ai-slop-manipulated-fake-images-birds-citizen-science-aoe
*This relates to the post in General from 2022 Coming soon: Deep fake nature photography? Things seem to have evolved exponentially since then!