Marty’s photo of the day #4470: AI technology amazes me. Yesterday, I finished the first draft of my eighth book, “Barry and Beth,” and in that novel, my characters are trying to produce a short video to stop barbaric alligator hunting practices in Florida. For a script idea, they try AI. Well, I did that in real life, and the script was so hilarious and good that I left it untouched in the novel (giving proper credit, of course).
What does that have to do with this wildflower I photographed last week during Deb’s and my stay at a US Forest Service cabin in Montana? While trying to identify the flower, Deb paged through three of her wildflower identification books, and I tried multiple internet searches. Neither of us could find a match. Finally this morning, I uploaded the photo to an on-line AI plant ID program, and it identified the flower in less than five seconds.
This is an “elegant death camas” also known as “anticlea elegans.” As the name suggests, the plant is highly poisonous and, apparently, it killed multiple early western settlers who confused it with certain species of onions.