The “Shazam for Things” Is A Free App That Identifies Plants, Animals and Other Objects in Your Photos

EyeSpy is an app that is is part of an ongoing attempt to involve ordinary people in citizen science projects. Similar to Shazam – an app that allows you to identify music from audio recordings – the EyeSpy app allows you to identify plants, animals, cars, clothing and most other things from your photos by harnessing image recognition technology.

Whether you’re exploring the great outdoors or your own backyard, using the app encourages curious adventurers to become engaged with the world around them. Fun and educational for kids and adults alike, users can learn about each new object they photograph.

EyeSpy draws from existing data collected and stored in its own data sets, in combination with artificial intelligence and neural network technologies. When a new photo is uploaded, the artificial intelligence (AI) analyzes the photo to find a match, adds it to the user’s growing collection, and provides a summary of information from Google and Wikipedia. The AI currently recognizes 30,000 species of plants and animals, and will continue to improve with further use. The site’s founder explains, “Even though we can already identify a great many things with a pretty high accuracy, we can continue to improve our modelling to get more data, and to do that we need more people taking pictures.”

Inspired to explore? You can download the EyeSpy app on iOS and android devices.