British university making AI-powered app to identify donkeys
Those especially familiar with their donkeys might not need specialized technology to identify them, but for everyone else, there’s an app for that. Or at least, there will be soon.
Researchers at the University of Southampton off the southern coast of England are developing an app designed to identify donkeys at the nearby the Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary. The technology reportedly uses an artificial intelligence model trained on hundreds of images of donkeys to help quickly identify each animal.
The app is also hoped to identify health issues and alert staff if an animal behaves unusually. Gordon Pattison, trustee of the Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary, told the Southern Daily Echo that the donkeys once wore collars for identification, but the collars were abandoned because they were unsafe and the animals found them uncomfortable. She added that many donkeys have few distinguishing features and that they can be difficult to tell apart.
The app, which is expected to launch by the end of the year, makes use of one of AI’s greatest talents: pattern matching. Facial recognition systems used to identify humans are infamously popular and growing more common among law enforcement agencies, while object-detection software and facial recognition for other animals, such as dogs, have also been used by local government agencies to aid in tasks ranging from spotting stolen vehicles to identifying lost pets.
