Can artificial intelligence help people learn about nature? And if so, is using this technology worth the environmental toll and other consequences? On June 10 the nonprofit organization iNaturalist, which runs a popular online platform for nature observers, announced in a blog post that it had received a $1.5-million grant from Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI—an initiative of Google’s philanthropic arm—to “help build tools to improve the identification experience for the iNaturalist community.” More than 3.7 million people around the world—from weekend naturalists to professional taxonomists—use the platform to record observations of wild organisms and get help with identifying the species. To date, the iNaturalist community has logged upward of 250 million observations of more than half a million species, with some 430,000 members working to identify species from photographs, audio and text uploaded to the database. The announcement did not go over well with iNaturalist users, who took to the comments section of the blog post and a related forum, as well as Bluesky, in droves to voice their concerns.
How iNaturalist Works
Users submit “observations” of an individual organism they have encountered in the wild to the iNaturalist app on their phone or to the organization’s website. Observations typically include one or more photographs of the organism and may include notes and audio. An AI-powered feature called “computer vision” then suggests possible species identifications based on photographs. Users can choose one of these IDs to assign to their observation or use a broader category such as “Plants” or “Fungi” if they prefer. The app automatically records the date, time and location of the observation. Once the user saves the observation, it is shared to the community, and members can weigh in on the identification of the organism, building consensus as the discussion grows. Once the community has identified an organism to the species level, the observation is considered “research grade,” meaning it can be shared with scientists who are carrying out a study of that species, for example.
What the Google Grant Money Will Be Used For
In its blog post announcing the grant, iNaturalist noted, “By using generative AI (GenAI), we hope to synthesize information about how to distinguish different species and accurately convey that to iNaturalist users. Instead of just offering AI species suggestions of what you saw, we want to offer a why as well.” In the post, the organization said that it intends to develop a prototype of a tool to extend its computer vision identification capability to provide explanations of why this function suggests particular species and how to tell similar-looking species apart. Although iNaturalist did not provide details about how the GenAI tool would work, the post implied that it would synthesize existing information about identification from text comments that were provided by members of the community to generate identification tips. In the post, iNaturalist said it was aiming to produce a working demonstration of this new tool by the end of 2025.
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Why the iNaturalist Community Is Upset
The grant announcement met with backlash from community members. Many critics objected to the use of GenAI on environmental grounds—the technology uses vast amounts of energy and water, creates e-waste and drives demand for rare-earth metals, the mining of which contributes to habitat degradation. Detractors also worried that such a tool based on GenAI, which is notorious for “hallucinating,” would produce misinformation about species identifications. Others expressed concern about the possibility that their iNaturalist data could be used to devalue the work of professional taxonomists if the AI identification were presented as authoritative. Some said they would delete their accounts.
In response to the outcry from its users, iNaturalist has since made some clarifications: it has apologized for poor communication about the development and has offered assurances that it does not intend to replace the human-curated system of species identifications and that it will not give Google special access to user-contributed data. In a June 11 update to the blog post that announced the grant award, the organization wrote, “If the demo we create is not helpful, compromises data quality, has outsized environmental impacts, or is overall too flawed, we will not keep it.” And in a forum post, iNaturalist’s executive director Scott Loarie wrote, “There’s no way we’re going to unleash AI generated slop onto the site. iNaturalist is about human connection and expertise and using technology to help elevate and support that.”
But the follow-ups didn’t satisfy some community members, who noted that iNaturalist’s messaging did not make clear whether it was still intending to use GenAI or, if so, how it would do so.
