Unlock Natures Secrets With This Powerful AI App
Ever walked past a fascinating plant or spotted an unusual insect and wished you knew what it was? One writer's curiosity about the native-looking plants outside their new home led them to an incredible tool: Seek by iNaturalist. It's a free app that uses artificial intelligence to identify plants, animals, and fungi from a simple photo. Even better, your discoveries can help advance real scientific research.
What is Seek and How Does It Work
Seek by iNaturalist is a project born from a unique partnership. It began as a master's project at UC Berkeley and evolved into a joint initiative between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. The platform operates as a nonprofit with a mission to connect people with nature through crowdsourced data. Today, it hosts a massive database with over 250 million observations covering more than half a million species.
The app's magic lies in its use of computer vision AI. When you upload a photo, the AI analyzes it by comparing it against a model trained on millions of previously confirmed observations. The AI also works behind the scenes to refine species recognition, improve pattern detection, and help you distinguish between very similar-looking organisms. However, technology is only part of the equation. After the AI makes a suggestion, your observation is shared with a community of naturalists who confirm or correct the identification. This powerful combination of AI and human expertise ensures that your contributions become valuable, research-grade data.
Getting Started Your Guide to Using Seek
Ready to become a citizen scientist? Here’s how to begin your journey with Seek.
1. Download and Set Up First, find the Seek app in your phone's app store. You can create an account with your email or a social media login. To get the full experience, you'll need to grant the app camera and location permissions, which are essential for the AI's computer vision and for accurately logging the location of your finds.
2. Practice with the Camera Before you head out, it's a good idea to get comfortable with the camera function. Tap the camera button and try snapping photos of plants or fungi you have nearby. Note how factors like lighting, angles, and background can affect the AI's ability to make an accurate identification. For best results, try to get clear, focused shots.
3. Analyze and Log Your Observation The app's computer vision AI will analyze your photo and suggest potential species, a process that takes less than a minute. You can then add more details, such as GPS coordinates, and note whether the organism was captive (like a houseplant) or wild.
4. Contribute to Science Once you post your observation, it can be reviewed by experts and other users in the iNaturalist community. If the community confirms the species, your observation officially becomes scientific data. You become a bridge between the natural world you see and the scientists working to understand it.
For more tips, the iNaturalist team recommends checking out their company guides or downloading the Seek user guide.
Is Seek the Right App for You
Seek is essentially an Instagram for nature enthusiasts, turning a simple walk into a volunteer opportunity for scientific discovery. Any technology that connects us more deeply to nature while advancing science is a valuable tool for the planet.
However, it's good to be aware of a few things. While the app has 3.7 million users globally, the speed of identification confirmations can depend on how active the expert community is in your specific region. Rural areas might experience slower response times.
Naturally, questions of AI ethics and privacy arise. The iNaturalist team emphasizes that while location data is important for identifying wild species, users have full control. You can choose to obscure the exact location of your observations to protect your privacy. You can even use the AI identification feature without an account or posting publicly. The platform's Privacy Policy is regularly updated to support the community's well-being.
Ultimately, Seek by iNaturalist offers a fantastic way to educate yourself about the ecosystems around you and contribute to a global biodiversity dataset. It's a virtuous cycle of learning and improvement, built on community trust to help people connect with the natural world.
