Scientists are appealing to birdwatchers to limit their use of artificial intelligence when editing images, fearing it could undermine the credibility of citizen science platforms such as iNaturalist and Macaulay Library. These platforms are routinely used in research to monitor species’ habitat ranges and migration patterns.
Rise of AI-Generated Fake Sightings
The proliferation of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google Gemini has led to a sharp increase in fake and enhanced images of rare birds across wildlife photography forums. Users can create high-quality fake images in seconds or enhance a photograph by asking the AI to remove a branch or leaf, which can inadvertently introduce significant changes, such as altering the bird's features.
In a recent commentary in the scientific journal Nature, researchers warned that hundreds of fake images have already been discovered on popular species databases. The true scale of the issue remains unknown, as many could go undetected, potentially contaminating public records used by scientists.
Expert Concerns
“My experience of looking at Facebook these days is that a huge volume of wildlife photos now are simply AI-generated imagery,” said Dr. Alexander Lees, an ecologist at Manchester Metropolitan University and co-author of the commentary. “The idea that we could maybe use those photos to help us understand where species are in space and time is very difficult.”
Outright hoaxes remain rare and are often easy to spot, Lees noted—nobody is falling for a toucan sighting in Siberia. However, birders frequently use AI to edit and improve an image, and the algorithm can then introduce parts from different bird species, creating a composite.
Lees highlighted an example: a false sighting of a red-winged blackbird in central Brazil, a species normally found in North America. The photographed bird was actually an epaulet oriole, but the photographer had asked an AI platform to “make the picture look better,” resulting in the addition of red-winged blackbird features.
Impact on Citizen Science
“Wildlife photographers can be quite obsessed with getting a beautiful photo, but there’s a risk that the image might actually cause problems down the line when AI has been used to edit it,” said Lees.
Citizen science organisations are working to understand the scale of the problem. On iNaturalist, a social network for nature enthusiasts, only 1,400 of over 610 million images have been flagged for AI use. These platforms have enabled dozens of discoveries, from tracking how plants and animals respond to climate breakdown to recording new behaviours.
Tony Iwane, iNaturalist’s director of community support and a co-author of the Nature paper, said most cases are unlikely to be malicious but appealed for vigilance. “On platforms like ours, regular people are posting information that a scientist could probably never get at scale. It is also almost like a sensor of what is happening on Earth in real time: are plants flowering early? Are species moving north as the climate warms? The more we know about where species are, the better informed we can be as conservationists. But the information needs to be accurate,” he said.
