This project was anticipated at the end of this blog post from last year, which was otherwise about another somewhat similar project using AI to describe images on iNat (although the AI was not trained on iNat content for that one): Search iNaturalist Photos With Text
In general iNat has been involved in AI research for a long time and I’d expect it will continue to do so, so this is another one of those tensions that are bound to come up regularly, as I think the demographic(s) that find iNat most appealing are also more likely than average to have reservations about AI.
Edit: Might be worth linking this thread as well as some overlapping subjects have already been discussed extensively there: Is the iNaturalist use of artificial intelligence damaging this planet?