When I recently moved, one of the building’s standout features was the plethora of different plant species in front of its windows. But not like standard landscaping — more like drier plants, seemingly native to the area.
Curious and fairly incompetent in plant sciences, I looked for help in being able to categorize and understand more about it. That’s how I found Seek by iNaturalist, a free app where you take photos of plants, animals and fungi. Artificial intelligence suggests its type — with human confirmation — while your input and contributions elevate scientific research.
What is Seek and how does it use AI?
Founded in 2008 as a master’s project from UC Berkeley students, iNaturalist later became a joint initiative between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. It strives to connect people to nature and conservation through crowdsourced data. Today, it contains more than 250 million observations of more than a half-million species. (And I just added seven more in roughly 5 minutes.)
Seek by iNaturalist is 100% free thanks to donors who contributed to the platform. It operates as a nonprofit organization that makes all collected data — with the option to turn it off — openly accessible to scientists and conservationists worldwide. iNaturalist uses computer vision AI to analyze uploaded photos against a model trained on millions of previous observations.
AI is also used on the back end — it optimizes species recognition accuracy, to display the most relevant photos alongside suggestions and pattern recognition improvements. This helps you distinguish between similar-looking species at home or across your local ecosystems.
According to the iNaturalist team, “When you use the AI camera feature on any wild living thing, iNaturalist suggests an identification for what you might be seeing — whether plant, insect, fungus or other organism.”
They shared that from there, that photo becomes a useful piece of data for science and conservation. But ultimately, a community of naturalists confirm or correct those AI suggestions.
Together, AI and human intelligence help newcomers contribute to biodiversity documentation from their first upload.
How to use iNaturalist to spot and categorize nature
1. First search for Seek in your app store of choice and create an account by signing up with email or a social media authenticator. You’ll also need to allow camera and location permissions to be able to use the AI’s computer vision and accurately detect species.
2. It’s best to play around a bit before starting scans. Open the app and tap the camera button — it’s designed to recognize any plant, animal and fungi. I focused solely on plants, as that’s what I had readily available. Snap a couple photos or hold the camera button down to snap continuously.
Using iNaturalist’s AI camera to identify a plant species.
As you’re testing the camera out, note background images, angles and even lighting, which all play a part in the AI tool’s ability to accurately recognize what you’ve captured. (I had to redo a couple because an attempt to take a birds-eye shot ended up with pictures of my feet.)
3. Next, the AI computer vision will analyze your photo and suggest possible species. This takes no longer than 30 seconds. Here you can also record GPS coordinates and you have the option to add details about behavior, size and other aspects of whatever it is you observed and captured. Beyond this, you can also toggle between privacy options, and select whether it is captive, like a plant, or wild, like natural growth.
4. AI also has suggestions for your species identification, which show up as percentages for accuracy. You can also post your observation — if geoprivacy is open — to the community for review by users and experts, like scientists. Once the community confirms your species, your observation becomes scientific data.
The point here is that you are part of the collection process for scientists to learn more about species in the world. With your input and the community’s approval, you’re directly involved in this process. Think of yourself as a bridge between reality and what scientists are constantly trying to understand and improve.
The iNaturalist team provided tips for getting the best results, alongside checking out their company guides, or downloading the Seek user guide: treat AI suggestions as a starting point, and engage with other humans; explore information on iNaturalist’s database; and be aware that there are more advanced camera suggestions in the iPhone app over the Android app.
Should you use iNaturalist?
The app is designed like Instagram for nature lovers, with a volunteer process that positions itself as additional help for scientists’ discoveries. In my opinion, technology that helps connect people to nature and advances scientific understanding is inherently valuable for our planet and future generations.
Some of the privacy options available on the iNaturalist Seek app when you upload your observations.
But even though Seek operates globally, with 3.7 million users, the identification accuracy depends heavily on having active expert communities in your region. This means rural or less-populated areas might get slower species confirmations.
Additionally, the topic of AI ethics comes to mind. I asked the iNaturalist team about this. They responded that the location is important for information when correctly identifying species, especially wild ones. Yet they also noted that anyone using iNaturalist can “choose to obscure the precise locations of observations to protect their privacy” and that you can use the AI identification feature without creating an account or posting publicly.
The iNaturalist team also regularly updates the Privacy Policy in support of the well-being of the community. The main goal is to create an open biodiversity dataset that can be used to protect nature around the world.
Overall, Seek by iNaturalist is a great way to educate yourself and contribute to multiple versions of ecosystems in the process while learning and sharing your findings along the way — or, as the iNaturalist team shared, a “virtuous cycle of collective effort and improvement, built on community trust and benefit in service of helping people connect with nature and biodiversity worldwide.”
