I want to test the iNaturalist computer vision model. In another question, I was told that there is currently no public API for the CV model. I.e., to get species suggestions from an automated script, I need to create observations. Thus, the question arises, whether and how me creating observation…

[image] mrpopp: Will adding/removing images to/from observations always lead to a fresh, unbiased run of the CV model? Only the first photo is checked.

This is something that I have been working on as a side project. I wanted to test how the CV algorithms compare between iNat, Pl@ntNet, Google Lens, and a couple annoying ones with ads (I’ll make a forum topic with my results eventually). But to summarize my methods: all I did was upload the same p…

Both on the computer and the phone, you should be able to run the algorithm without even saving the observation. So you could add the photo, run the model, and then if you don’t want to keep the observation delete it before even posting and record the results.

I would caution against using just the first suggestion from iNat based on how the CV suggestions work. That was one of the issues with a recent paper that did these kinds of comparisons: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment?id=10.1371/annotation/764a85c6-ed5b-41ae-bca4-297301dfe0f3

I would suggest searching for and reading through the existing documentation of the iNat CV - there are a fair amount of journal and explanatory posts on iNat itself that will answer some/most of these questions. There are also a lot of existing posts on this forum that can answer some questions as …

I have read the criticism on this paper, which is part of why I thought I’d rather ask than copy some method others used. I guess I can obtain the information about whether the CV model suggested a genus rather than a species, or it just added the genus as additional “I am sure it is this genus” inf…

[image] mrpopp: to get species suggestions from an automated script, I need to create observations. Two comments: running a script on the CV may be against the rules on machine generated content, tread carefully as said before, it is possible to have the CV evaluate photos without creating …

From all I’ve read, I cannot use the API to get “just an ID”, but it will create an observation. I guess this could already bias the result through some post-CV modification of the probability distribution under consideration of species observed nearby. This is what I mean when I say “independent”:…

[image] jwidness: the rolling window may alter which suggestions are nearby or not On second thought, since it uses the date of the photo and not the date of upload, as long as your photos have the same date, the nearby window shouldn’t affect your results.

[image] mrpopp: I want to test the iNaturalist computer vision model. why would you want to do this?

Testing the computer vision capabilities: What are valid practices?

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Testing the computer vision capabilities: What are valid practices?

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