Which taxa are included in the computer vision suggestions?

Modified on Wed, 20 Nov at 12:36 PM

This has changed over time and may change before this FAQ is updated again, as we are continually working on improving the training process. But basically, here's what's needed for a species to be included in the Computer Vision model:

  • There must be at least 100 photos of the species and 60 observations of the species, and we don't choose more than 5 photos from an observation to train the model. Observations do not need to be Research Grade in order to be used in training, but observations with a matching Community ID will be prioritized.

  • Some photos that are not included in the training phase are used to test and validate the model. These must have a Community ID.


Because of this, not every species with at least 100 photos and 60 observations will meet the requirements to be included in a training run. It's dependent on how many photos there are per observation, and whether the randomly chosen group of observations meets the requirements.


If no species within a broader taxon like genus or family meets the requirements, we may train the model on that genus or family, based on those photos.

We try to release a new version of the model once a month using transfer learning (see more here), and write a post about it in the iNaturalist Blog.

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