Artificial intelligence is being used for some incredible things, but it’s not always helpful. A new iPhone app that promises to help you identify mushrooms using AI has been labeled “potentially deadly,” and experts say you should steer well clear of it.
Mushroom picking is a mouth-watering hobby for some, but scoffing the wrong one can be dangerous. What’s more, it’s difficult to tell many mushrooms apart. Some look identical to their perfectly safe cousins, but eating them can leave you in hospital, or even dead.
“The most common mushroom near me is something called the yellow stainer, and it looks just like an edible horse mushroom from above and the side,” explains Colin Davidson, a mushroom forager with a PhD in microbiology, to The Verge.
But if you eat one, you’ll be “violently ill” and could end up in hospital. “You need to pick it up and scratch it or smell it to actually tell what it is,” Davidson added. And there are many other mushroom varieties with potentially deadly lookalikes.
That’s why using an AI app to identify mushrooms based on their appearance is incredibly risky. Experts are advising iPhone users to avoid Mushroom from Quest Mobile, a “potentially deadly” app that promises to do just that for $7.99.
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Its designer, Nicholas Sheriff, says the app was only intended to be a rough guide to mushrooms.
It was built for “moms in their backyard” rather than mushroom hunters looking for a fresh bite. Sheriff is now “pivoting to turn the app into a platform for chefs to buy and sell truffles,” according to The Verge.
When we tried the iOS-only software this morning, we found that Sheriff had changed its preview picture on the App Store to say “identify truffles instantly with just a pic.” In our own tests, though, the app was unable to identify either common button or chestnut mushrooms, and crashed repeatedly.
Mushroom isn’t the only app that promises to identify mushrooms, but this one lulls users into a false sense of security by promising “revolutionary AI” that makes it seem accurate and reliable. It’s probably best you spend your $7.99 on something else.
