What's Seek? (Sorry to have to ask)

Sorry to have to ask, but what’s Seek? Is it the same computer program that suggests identifications for photos posted on iNaturalist? Students want me to talk about it tomorrow, but I have never used it.

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Seek by iNaturalist is a separate mobile app that uses computer vision to award badges. By default it does not share any data publicly so it is safe for children, but there is an option to connect an iNaturalist account and upload observations from Seek. The coolest thing about Seek is that it gives identifications in the camera, even before you take a photo.

https://vimeo.com/328588355

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Does it identify using the same computer programs that do the computer learning and then make suggestions on observations posted on iNaturalist?

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Seek and iNaturalist use the same computer vision model, though they may be temporarily out of sync when we transition to a new model.

Seek does not provide a way to interact with any observations on iNaturalist, but does display information about species based on data from iNaturalist.

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So I would expect Seek to have many of the same issues - Malus fuscus everywhere, all grasses with condensed panicles are Timothy, etc.

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I am so tempted to respond with “What is Malus fuscus? What are panicles? (Sorry to have to ask)”. But I won’t!

Uh oh, I think I did.

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Well, it ids Alopecurus pretty well.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus_fusca
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicle

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Every aster is Eurybia divaricata except for Eurybia divaricata which is every other aster :smile:

In all seriousness, I have been impressed with the accuracy of the latest computer vision model. There are still some truly bizarre misidentifications but also some truly amazing ones, like certain mosses and lichens being identified to species.

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I’m glad to hear it’s getting that good.

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