More like Pokemon Go, actually
March 24, 2018 8:45 AM   Subscribe

This new app is like Shazam for your nature photos. Using neural networks trained on the vast collection of photos posted to the iNaturalist app, Seek helps you identify local flora and fauna and learn more about them.
posted by BuddhaInABucket (29 comments total) 34 users marked this as a favorite
 
Awesome, I've wanted something like this for many years!

Not awesome, only on iOS :(
posted by potrzebie at 9:06 AM on March 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


I think it's meant to appear on Android devices eventually, potrzebie, so keep your eyes out for it!
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:08 AM on March 24, 2018


I just want an app that is as good at helping me identify trees as the Audubon Field Guide. Is that so much to ask?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:21 AM on March 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


Edible mushrooms here I come!
posted by benzenedream at 9:25 AM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


So a kid-friendly and privacy-forward version of iNaturalist, cool!
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:36 AM on March 24, 2018


Yeah, it looks like inaturalist exists on Android so if imagine it's only a matter of time.
posted by potrzebie at 9:38 AM on March 24, 2018


I'm with Mr.Encyclopedia. I want a tree identification app. I know all my firs now, but I've got to work on my pines.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:46 AM on March 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I;m really excited about this!
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:06 AM on March 24, 2018


It looks like there are a few Android apps that are similar to this, thought I haven't tried any of them yet (never thought to look before reading this post) so I have no idea how they compare to Seek.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:10 AM on March 24, 2018


We need a virtual machine app for iOS.
posted by bz at 11:16 AM on March 24, 2018


I thought "neural networks" was just a fancy term for "MadLibs"
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:17 AM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Edible mushrooms here I come!

My thoughts exactly. This is going to kill people.
posted by Sys Rq at 12:07 PM on March 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


Won’t someone think of the mushrooms
posted by ericost at 12:50 PM on March 24, 2018


Does this actually work, though? I've tried a few of this type of app, and found that they pretty much didn't. Which doesn't surprise me, because plant identification relies on more information than can easily be conveyed in a single photograph, even if it's a good photograph and you already have a pretty good idea of what you're looking at. I mean, it can be tricky even for humans. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear how well this app actually performs.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:12 PM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hmm, so I've only been able to very lightly test it so far, but it works better than expected. It knew that a shaggy silouette against the gray sky was a white pine. It knew that some bark I was showing it was from a sweet birch. And it guessed that some oxalis in a pot on the windowsill was some kind of wood sorrel, though it wasn't sure what. It's been useless at garden plants or exotic potted plants though; it seems to rely heavily on knowing what's native to your area.

Still, much better than any of the similar apps I've tried. Will keep testing!

I note that this needs good cell reception to work its magic, of course. Not so useful if you're way out in the woods. It can work from saved photos though,
so you can take a picture and try to ID it when you get home.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:31 PM on March 24, 2018


It identified my cat and some pidgeons I’m clung to try it on some more difficult subjects soon.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 1:43 PM on March 24, 2018


It identified my cat and, indeed, a human, when I took a selfie in the app.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 4:16 PM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


iNaturalist has volunteers that help verify neural network guesses or misses, which comes in handy. Takes a while sometimes.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:38 PM on March 24, 2018


Not awesome, only on iOS :(

Slight derail, but why is this? Because time and time again apps come out on iOS first and then, eventually, and sometimes after their 5 minutes of fame are done, do they make it to Android. Does the ease of doing QA on a smaller set of potential devices override the fact that Android has a massive 87% to 12% market share advantage over iOS?
posted by thecjm at 6:09 PM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I have a small woods and grow something like 70 species of native flowers. I threw a couple random photos (royal catchfly, sneezeweed and California poppy) and it guessed all three correctly. Not bad! Looking forward to using it in the field.
posted by misterpatrick at 6:11 PM on March 24, 2018


So I took the app on a walk in the woods and I'm fairly impressed. It's not perfect, but it's surprisingly effective. It's winter here so there aren't as many things to point it at, but also there are few leaves and no flowers to work with, making identification more challenging.

It got white pine from pictures of its silouette, a sapling, and a cone. It got sweet birch by the bark, and sweet pepperbush by its dried seed pods (which I thought was impressive). It got greenbriar by a strand of vine, and identified a rather tattered and squashed mullein. It recognized skunk cabbage shoots, holly leaves, and eastern redcedar by its bark and its berries. Also, I learned that one of the common mosses near me is pincushion moss (Leucobryum glaucum).

However, there were many things it struggled with. I couldn't get it to recognize an oak tree by bark or leaves. Likewise for ash. It confidently misidentified some unopened crocus as snowdrops. There were also just a lot of failed ID attempts where it wouldn't hazard a guess or was willing to say that something was some kind of spruce, or some kind of pine, but wouldn't give a species.

Also, I think it's a little misleading the way it presents its results. When it thinks it has an ID, it gives a very confident, definitive-sounding message. There's no acknowledgement of the fact that the system sometimes makes mistakes, and I don't care for that. That said, if you take this into account I think it's still a useful tool. I think it's best to think of its identifications as somewhat provisional, and to confirm them if it's a plant that you're not personally familiar with. But they're usually right (at least for common plants that are visible in New England in very early spring) and so they serve as an excellent starting point for a final identification.

I'll definitely be keeping this app and will make use of it in the future.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:28 PM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Does the ease of doing QA on a smaller set of potential devices override the fact that Android has a massive 87% to 12% market share advantage over iOS?

"iOS game developers tell why they favor iPhone exclusives over fragmented Android"

Many mobile game developers launch their titles on both iOS and Android at the same time. But there’s a batch of talented iOS game makers who prefer creating exclusives on Apple’s platform. They think that Android’s fragmentation makes it too hard to do simultaneous launches.

In 2017, games made up a larger share of Google Play’s consumer spending compared to iOS, but consumers spent nearly two times more on iOS games than on Google Play games, according to a year-end report by market researcher App Annie.

[...]

Cash: Another reality that can often be overlooked is that for small teams, it’s just not an option to do that many platforms at once. For us, we have to prioritize not only the platform that works the best, but also the platform that fits our products the best. We would have to delay the shipping time by many months if we wanted to hit both platforms at the same time. Because of the things that Zach and Dan both mentioned, which I also agree with—it’s just, why put in that extra six months or whatever it is to do something for a platform that just isn’t as good, quite frankly?

posted by Celsius1414 at 6:56 PM on March 24, 2018


Does this work internationally?
posted by destrius at 8:32 AM on March 25, 2018


Try as I might I could not get it to ID my dog. "We think this is a photo of Wolves, Jackals, and Allies [sic] but we aren't sure what species it is."
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:43 AM on March 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


It's free destrius, download it and try it out to see. I can easily imagine it technically working internationally but actually working best in areas where people have taken lots and lots of pictures to feed into the AI's training corpus.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:44 AM on March 25, 2018


Doesn’t work on 9/10 of the things in my yard.
posted by corb at 3:27 PM on March 25, 2018


Corb, are you trying it on ornamentals or on native plants? I've found that it's worthless for ornamentals and exotics but works pretty well on native stuff.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:45 PM on March 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Ornamentals, I’ll try it on the native stuff shortly and see if it improves!
posted by corb at 4:10 PM on March 25, 2018


I have an android phone, but I've really been enjoying inaturalist (there's an app and stuff) even though it's not super-privacy-enabled. It's "suggest an ID" ai is pretty decent for native species. Sometimes it has trouble but more often than not it does a decent job. The app itself gets me out and tromping around the local landscape, so that's a good thing for me. I might enjoy seek, but for now inaturalist is pretty enertaining. Clubmosses. I know them. :)
posted by which_chick at 6:42 PM on March 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


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