AI can use tourist photos to help track Antarctica's penguins

Artificial intelligence can help accurately map and track penguin colonies in Antarctica by analysing tourist photos. "Right now, everyone has a camera in their pocket, and so the sheer volume of data being collected around the world is incredible," says Heather Lynch at Stony Brook University in New York. Haoyu Wu at Stony Brook University and his colleagues, including Lynch, used an AI tool developed by Meta to highlight Adélie penguins in photographs taken by tourists or scientists on the ground. With guidance from a human expert, the AI tool was able to automatically identify and outline entire colonies in photos. This semi-automated method is much faster than doing everything manually because the AI tool takes just 5 to 10 seconds per image, compared with a person taking 1 to 2 minutes, says Wu. The team also created a 3D digital model of the Antarctic landscape using satellite imagery and terrain elevation data.