An international team of scientists has created a new tool which could help identify how species around the world are responding to climate change.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh, University College London, UMass Amherst, iNaturalist and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed technology to test how well AI algorithms can mine the millions of wildlife images uploaded to the internet by the public each year for information such as what species are eating and how healthy they are.

While existing AI algorithms can automatically identify species in uploaded images, it was previously unclear whether they could reveal further information.

The researchers say that the new tool could unearth key insights into the impacts of climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and other pressures on tens of thousands of animal and plant species by analysing citizen science websites.

The new tool, which is called INQUIRE, measures AI’s ability to drawn conclusions from an image bank of five million wildlife photos uploaded to the iNaturalist citizen science website.

The team of scientists found that current AI algorithms are capable of answering some of these types of questions, but they fail on the more complex ones. These included those that require reasoning about small features within images and ones that contain detailed scientific terminology.

They said that their findings highlight opportunities to develop new AI algorithms that can better help scientists efficiently explore vast image collections.

“The thousands of wildlife photos uploaded to the internet each day provide scientists with valuable insights into where different species can be found on Earth," said Dr Oisin Mac Aodha, reader in machine learning at The University of Edinburgh. "However, knowing what species is in a photo is just the tip of the iceberg.

“These images are potentially a hugely rich resource that remains largely untapped. Being able to quickly and accurately comb through the wealth of information they contain could offer vital clues about how species are responding to multi-faceted challenges like climate change.”

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