I think identifying mushrooms with these apps is a fool’s errand at this point. They are almost always wrong, unless it’s something very obvious and distinctive.
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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As someone who is learning(because I am interested, not to try and eat) it usually gets me close, and somewhere to start… Usually.
Well maybe your experience has been different from mine but the suggestions I get are usually very wrong. You can absolutely use it as a jumping off point for further research and verification but I am wary of people thinking that these apps are at all accurate for mushrooms. There was just an article of a guy who ate destroying angels because his app ID’d them as giant puffballs. This is not a level of accuracy that I can endorse when the consequences can be life or death.
Seek specifically has a warning as soon as you open the camera to start an identification. I personally would not trust it enough for consumption even without the warning.
I wonder how iNaturalist would do with the same image. I haven't used seek before.
Seek is by inaturalist.
That's interesting, I've noticed recently that the iNaturalist identification has been suggesting wrong IDs on some very easy and obvious images like a pair of Killdeer IDd as a Hooded Merganser.
I tried on a different specimen later in the morning and it got to stalked puffball, I think it was. It was not a full ID, one dot from full.
Puffball, puffer fish, yeah whatev, close enough. :-D