[thaumasiotes]

> Seek (by iNaturalist) is a good (and fun) app too, it visually identifies all kinds of things (plants, fungi, animals), and integrates with iNaturalist very well.

I left a comment in another thread a while ago complaining that Seek doesn't seem especially concerned with whether its identifications are correct. It was not well received.

I can now substantiate that with species-level identifications provided by Seek, where I have independent knowledge of what I'm looking at. I took several pictures of elephant seals.

For two of them, Seek was willing to make a species-level identification and give me credit for encountering that species.

One was identified as a New Zealand fur seal.

The other was a clouded monitor lizard.

[yaky]

Yes, it's very apparent that it was trained on specific images, e.g. pointing camera at a window insect screen will assume "insect", and a pile of dry leaves is either "mammals" or "tinamous". My orange cat who lays with front paws crossed is a domestic dog (because dogs lay like that). But an aphid colony and specific lichens are identified almost immediately.

In my experience, it's best for small static things, like fungi, lichens, some plants and insects.

Merlin sound ID, too, can produce false identifications (e.g: my relative fooling around was a marsh wren), and I've seen birders frown upon "Identified by Merlin" rare birds posted to eBird.