Date: 7/13/26 10:49 pm From: Jim Dehnert via groups.io <dehnert...> Subject: [southbaybirds] [admin] An AI policy for (SBB)
Greetings to SBB subscribers.
We have had queries to the administrators of <southbaybirds...> (SBB)
about our policy on artificial intelligence (AI) tool use in producing
posts to the group, and agree that it is a good time to address this
question. What follows is an initial effort, which may well need to be
refined further. It starts with a summarized policy below, followed by an
elaborated version including some rationale.
We welcome your feedback, but it is off-topic for the group itself. Do not
reply directly to this message. Please send comments to
southbaybirds+<owner...> <southbaybirds+<owners...> or
<dehnert...> You'll hear back from us, and we'll incorporate what we
learn in subsequent iterations. Note that some of us are software
engineers but not AI experts, and feel free to correct any errors I make
(with explanations).
Thank you for your contributions to birding in Santa Clara County,
Jim Dehnert, List Administrator
Policy Summary:
A simple summary of what follows is: SBB is a forum for factual reporting
of birds you see. The use of AI on SBB should be limited to minor
corrections of factual, human writing (such as spelling and grammar
corrections), and minor photograph enhancements (like denoise and
sharpening). AI-generated elaborations have no place on SBB. The use of AI
to help prepare your reports is not inherently a problem, but we ask that
you be very careful to ensure that it has not changed the essential content
of your identifications, descriptions, or any backup photos before you post
them.
AI tools are rapidly becoming widely available and easy to use. They can
greatly simplify some tasks central to posts on southbaybirds, including
writing posts and processing photos. This policy addresses what we
consider appropriate usage of these tools. Keep in mind the context:
Acceptable content on this list is almost entirely the reporting of recent
sightings of interesting birds in Santa Clara County. The objectives are
primarily to help other subscribers discover places where birds they want
to see might be found, and secondarily to serve as an historical record (a
function largely being overtaken by eBird).
AI Editing and Writing:
SBB posts need to identify, describe, and provide the location of the
bird(s) of interest. If you use AI, you should always review the results
to verify that it has not changed descriptions or other content in
significant ways. We should be seeing your description, and you are
responsible for what is sent. Pay particular attention that AI changes
have not eliminated uncertainty or nuance from your descriptions, nor
mis-corrected birding-specific terminology.
AI Photo Processing:
Photos shared on SBB should serve the primary purpose of the list, i.e.,
they should illustrate the subject bird(s) either to help less familiar
subscribers identify them in the field, or in some cases to help with
uncertain identities. Cropping or very minor retouching (e.g., sharpening,
noise reduction, light levels) is acceptable, but don’t go beyond that.
Avoid major edits like color shifts such as are produced by pushing
saturation, and don’t ever ask your AI tool to generate an image (or to
replace a significant part of one). These things can be done using either
AI or non-AI photo tools, so take care throughout the photo editing
process. It is important that users attempting to verify an ID have
essentially the original photo to work from, and over-editing can prevent
later exploration.
AI and Bird Identification:
Follow Cornell’s Merlin and eBird advice about using AI identification
tools. Audio IDs from Merlin are quite useful for learning bird calls and
discovering birds you wouldn’t otherwise notice, but they make mistakes
especially on rarer birds, and are suggestions that need to be confirmed
visually or by humans familiar with the vocalizations. Photo IDs are also
becoming very helpful, but present similar problems with mistakes,
especially when presented with poor photos. Be sure that you have
independent reasons to believe your AI tool. Keep in mind that the general
photo ID tools from Google and Apple are not currently location specific
and consequently make more, and more dramatic, mistakes than Merlin does.
Rationale and Elaboration:AI Editing and Writing:
The easiest AI assistance to use is probably to revise and clean up posts,
e.g., spelling, grammar, and style – this function is now integrated into
major email applications so that invocation requires little more than a
button click.
SBB posts need to identify, describe, and provide the location of the
bird(s) of interest. If you use AI for revision, we ask that you always
review the results to verify that it has not changed descriptions or other
content in significant ways – this must be your description of what you saw,
and is your responsibility. In particular, if there is any uncertainty in
the identification or description, the message should still be clear about
that after AI does its cleanup. (Writing style guidelines tend to
discourage uncertainty in wording, so that is something that AI
cleanup is likely
to remove.) Remember too that these tools are general-purpose, not
specific to birds or birding, so that may cause problems with birding
terminology, e.g., spell-correcting into something completely different.
Some AI tools available can flesh out full messages from minimal cues.
That may be an effective creative writing tool, but it won’t produce
descriptions that reflect uncertainty or nuance. Don’t ask your AI tool to
produce a description – it should be yours, and AI could determine that you
are talking about species X and add typical details of X from elsewhere.
If you use such capabilities at all, you need to be doubly careful that
we’re seeing facts about what you saw, not AI imagination (a.k.a. fiction
or hallucinations).
AI Photo Processing:
There is a wide variety of AI-assisted photo processing tools available
today. Many of the common photo apps have such capabilities built in
(e.g., Lightroom, Photoshop, Topaz), and your photo processing may use AI
even if your message writing does not.
Photos shared on SBB should serve the primary purpose of the list, i.e.,
they should illustrate the subject bird(s) either to help other subscribers
identify them in the field, or in some cases to help with uncertain
identities. In both cases, it can be critical to see the original photo
with minimal modification – that’s why eBird requests that photos submitted
be unmodified.
For SBB, cropping or very minor retouching (e.g., sharpening, noise
reduction, light levels) is acceptable, but don’t go beyond that. In
particular, don’t use photo tools (including AI) to remove the branch in
front of the bird, remove the background, shift the colors (e.g., pumping
up saturation), etc. If you really want to make a point that requires more
processing, you could provide the original and a processed image, clearly
labelled. Remember that your readers can do their own cleanup if they have
the original and want to explore, but you could eliminate that possibility
by heavy-handed processing beforehand.
From the above, it should be clear that asking your photo processing tool
(AI or not) to generate an image or a significant part of one is not
appropriate for SBB.
AI and Bird Identification:
AI is also making the bird identification process much easier, but that
also requires care. Most of you have probably encountered Cornell’s Merlin
app, which does ID assessments based on either audio recordings or photos,
using AI. It does very well, at least in North America. But it’s not
perfect, and its results are suggestions (sometimes several for the same
bird), not firm IDs. If you use eBird, you’ve probably seen warnings about
not relying on Merlin audio to report birds unless you or someone else
reliable can confirm based on visual confirmation or human audio
confirmation. That becomes even more important with rarer birds, partially
because there is less training data available for the AI. You should
follow that advice when reporting on SBB.
Photo ID also requires care. Merlin does pretty well, but can get it wrong
given a poor photo or just difficult cases. Other tools also do fairly
well – Google Image Search on Android, or Apple Visual Look Up on iPhone –
but they don’t do as well as Merlin, partially because they don’t take
proper account of location. So again, please take care to confirm your
identification before reporting to SBB.
Note that there’s a tension here between getting a timely notification for
true rarities out promptly to SBB users vs. making sure that the ID is
valid. Unless you think the bird is likely a rarity and time of the
essence, please deal with ID first – SBB is not a forum for miscellaneous
bird ID queries. For a potential rarity, check what you can and then
provide all of your information in your SBB post, including what you think
it might be and (importantly) why.
Do not disclose information that identifies the location of nesting birds of any species, to minimize stress on the nesting birds and the risk of vandalism or abuse.
