I found this link in the RSPB community. its source is from british birds and I thought this specific topic of ai generated images and how it afects birding would be important for this i spot nature forum its not just AI identifying things for people anymore but also AI images of birds of which theres lots of. birds arnt the only things that people can generate or use composite images with either but AI is getting better over time. nowadays AI can accurately resemble a bird or person to the point it doesnt look AI generated so AI images are improveing so much that it will eventualy be even harder spot if a image is AI generated and there are lots of examples nowadays. the article goes much better detail than this post on its own can
the post is very interesting and goes into how AI generated images impact birding
but you can use open sources like reverse image search to find out if its been distributed multiple times, or where the source of the image came from and where the image might of been taken. and also learn where it struggles and look closely to see if anything is off cause there is things that it struggles with. but is getting better and improving over time though so it is possible to find out even with ones that look exactly the same and seemingly without any deficits or flaws unlike some that are obvious. nowadays cause its contantly improving learning from faces and images its got to the point where theres alot that arnt obviously aI genrated anymore.
Extraordinary stuff! The honey buzzard with too many primaries reminds me of the image of Prince George with six fingers. But clearly AI is getting cleverer - and even imaginative. Interesting that the article references Merlin, the AI that I use most often. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good. (One of the challenges is that it is difficult to disprove a negative. For example, this morning, Merlin picked up both a treecreeper and a spotted flycatcher. I know from experience that treecreepers occur in that place but I haven’t had a spot fly there so far this year. I couldn’t see either bird, and wouldn’t have been confident of IDing either by sound. So I cannot definitely say that it was wrong about the spot fly - but strongly suspect it was. As also with the Firecrest it picked up a couple of days ago.)
yes it is interesting. because AI can recognise and identify birds but it can also create them either through editing software or through someone giving a chat bot or AI software a prompt which is basicaly telling it what you want it to make and the more details you give it the better but it can also do realistic ones without much description for instance I thought I would try it for myself to see how real it makes it. and it varys but it (can) produce very realistic photos of birds where if you looked at it you would think it was a genuine photo at first. the others arnt as realistic as the one in the top right it produced from my instruction
sometimes people online share images they have either taken themselfs or taken then used AI editing software or made by AI from AI software by itself without AI editing tools and they show up in search engines. AI generated images can be found in images of search engines and other common places online mixed in with the genuine real ones.
some people would type in google woodpigeon for instance if they wanted to see pictures of woodpigeons and it will come up with pictures of woodpigeons but photos from software that can now generate AI images like shutterstock and Adobe can also be found in images and not all will apear obviously AI generated so not all Wildlife photos are nedacerily taken by a person even if someone sends it on a online platform no matter what platform it is and that isnt allways nesacerily obvious
So anyone could make a photo that didnt exist until AI created it of any bird if they missed a photo oportunity of a certain species to share online either a birding platform or a photography site or for other reasons and not specify it was AI generated or worse claim to be photographed by you when it was actualy created by AI and not photographed. alternatively they could be an owner of a photograph they took but change the photo with AI either removing ot adding things or creating composite images without letting people know
I did try generating some plants and animals using generative AI last year. (Got a variety of new bullfinch species.) I’ve found that it does decent roses, but most plants aren’t well rendered, at least to a trained eye. (I thought it did better with fake landscapes, where there is more flexibility, but even there the results were often obviously unnatural.)
Another thing I’ve noticed is that it tends to put cherry blossom on all sorts of trees. I prompted for various trees in spring, and got cherry blossom on oak, ash, beech, birch, alder, larch (!), elder, rowan, aspen, poplar, willow, maple and sycamore. Hawthorn seemed to have its own blossom, and pine correctly lacked blossom.
