Plant-spotting apps often fail to identify correct species - New Scientist (1 Viewer)

[LittleBitOfBreadNoCheese]

Just read this in the printed edition of April 15th.
"Smartphone apps that identify plants from photographs can be as little as 4% accurate, which could put people foraging for food at risk and also lead to endangered plants being mislabelled as weeds and eradicated"...

The apps they looked at were Google Lens, Leaf Snap, iNaturalist, Pl@ntNet, Seek and Plant Snap (I only have Obsidentify unfortunately).

..
"Google declined a request for interview and the other app creators didn't respond."

Underlying article is at
doi.org/j479

 

[Butty]

So, what's new! No-one regards (or should regard) any of them as infallible - nor would any of them pretend to be so. They can be both astonishingly accurate and dreadfully wrong - obedience of fools and guidance of wise men, etc etc.
The peculiar statement that they . . .

can be as little as 4% accurate

. . . is a marvelous piece of journalistic worthlessness and meaninglessness which makes them sound far far less useful than they are in reality - if used judiciously.