NABU Storch 4d ago
tante

"You can tell what happened — Google promised iNaturalist free money if they would just do something, anything, that had some generative AI in it. iNaturalist forgot why people contribute at all, and took the cash."

(Original title: Google bribes iNaturalist to use generative AI — volunteers quit in outrage)

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/19/google-bribes-inaturalist-to-use-generative-ai-volunteers-quit-in-outrage/

Google bribes iNaturalist to use generative AI — volunteers quit in outrage

iNaturalist is a website that crowdsources pictures of plants and animals to help identify species. Its tagline is “A Community for Naturalists.” iNaturalist is administered by its own small charit…

Pivot to AI
Jun 23 at 10:00amWeb
Show threadElias Probst5d ago
@tante ...and uninstalled (used it without an account so far).
Show threadDavey4d ago
@tante Wikipedia almost did this, for AI summaries, and saw sense.
Show threadslotos4d ago

@tante Wikipedia faced a similar situation recently with an attempt to use AI to generate article summaries. They also offered a non-apology of „it should’ve been better communicated”.

There seems to be a process in place that either selects tone deaf pricks to join these charities or turns those who joined into aforementioned pricks.

Show threadDavey4d ago
@slotos @tante you don't need to be working in a for-profit to be susceptible to FOMO, it looks like
Show threadPetterOfCats4d ago
@tante if you have to pay people to use your service, it's not worth using. this has serious "please clap" energy.
Show threadDjembro, RO, supports 🇺🇦🇬🇪4d ago
@tante
I’m going to stay on iNaturalist and see how it goes. A number of platforms I frequent are integrating AI in various forms, but so far, it really hasn’t caused any degradation in my experience. The best platforms make AI involvement optional, as far as what I, as a user, can see. Yeah, the AI probably trains on my interactions whether or not I opt out of seeing its products. AI is everywhere, training on everything. Since I live in Kyiv, I’ve decided “AI in iNaturalist” is not something I’ll be upset about, although I do understand why some contributors are upset.
Show threadnightoo3d ago

@djembro @tante I think the important distinction here is whether you only see an issue with AI being forced down your throat (always wrong obviously) or also with AI-powered features that you may or may not use.

The latter is more debatable. You could make the point that any use of genAI serves as an affirmation of a fundamentally problematic technology.

This is difficult imo and I haven't really arrived at an answer for this myself yet

Show threadle Pétomane Ancien4d ago
@tante When I first caught wind of this, I tried fact checking and found nothing. Thanks for providing this information and bye-bye iNaturalist.
Show threadts 🚉4d ago
@tante hmm, yeah the only way I’ll be making contributions going forward is if iNat returns the cash to google and drops this project
Show threadMagnus Ahltorp4d ago
@tante Also, even though they have their own forum, they only announced getting the grant on Musk’s private forum. They seem to have no idea what they’re doing.
Show threadelilla&, summer enjoyer travesti4d ago

@tante I want to add that iNaturalist admins have been claiming they aren't actually going to do GenAI. but that's what they told Google they're going to do, and the community is justifiedly sceptical. here's a thread about it:

https://awful.systems/post/4714650?scrollToComments=true

Google bribes iNaturalist to use generative AI — volunteers quit in outrage - awful.systems

video version [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMc7sVrGKyU&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA]

Show threadVirginia Holloway4d ago
@tante I deleted my account and the app. It was really cool. I’ll find the information somewhere else, or just not know. I hate this timeline.
Show threadRoldy Clark4d ago
@tante NOOOO
Show threadTanika4d ago
@tante well done, guys! 💪
Show threadSku_te4d ago
@tante That writer certainly has a thing against AI, to put it mild.
Show threadtante4d ago
@sku_te you mean @davidgerard? I'd say he has less against AI than against bullshit
Show threadSku_te4d ago
@tante @davidgerard True!
Show threadnightoo3d ago
@sku_te @tante sometimes David's AI-spite is exactly the kind of healing I need
Show threadSku_te2d ago
@nightoo @tante I can imagine!
Show threadMsMerope4d ago
@tante hmmmm I have an iNaturalist account I haven't used in eons... I wonder if my account still exists and if so if I can delete my account... 🤔
Show threadWe're in deep 💩 now4d ago
@tante yep. I'm out.
Show threadDmitri Ravinoff3d ago
@tante
Check out Obsidentify (https://observation.org/apps/obsidentify/) as an alternative.
Show threadMoss (the τεχie) <(fsm)>{{3d ago
@tante
“we hope to synthesize information”
… ’nuff said.
Show threadBastian Greshake Tzovaras2d ago

@tante as that's right in my wheelhouse I also wrote about this: https://tzovar.as/inaturalist-backlash/

And about the larger issue of how it demonstrates another case of seeing volunteers as free labor without any decision making power: https://tzovar.as/power-sharing/

Generative 'AI' in citizen science: the iNaturalist backlash

A couple of days ago, iNaturalist – a citizen science project/platform for observations of living beings in the natural world – announced that they were going to be part of a grant/program of Google to implement generative ‘AI’ (or “GenAI”1) into their tooling. Since then, many users of iNaturalist, including...

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras