Simon Willison
Aug 15
Northern Gannet
Northern Gannet, in Pillar Point Harbor, CA, US This is Morris. Morris is a local celebrity: the only known Northern Gannet ( Morus bassanus ) in the entire Pacific Ocean.
Northern Gannet, Great Blue Heron, California Brown Pelican
The photographer captured a Northern Gannet, Great Blue Heron, and California Brown Pelican in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, California, using a 200‑800mm Canon EF lens. The birds were observed congregating beneath a harbor sign, providing a striking image of wildlife in their natural habitat.
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Simon Willison
Sep 19
California Sea Lion, Brandt's Cormorant
The photograph captures a California Sea Lion and a Brandt's Cormorant at Pillar Point Harbor in California, USA. While the main subjects are the sea lion and cormorant, the image also reveals a Northern Gannet named Morris peeking out from behind a sign’s base. The scene showcases a diverse group of marine wildlife in a harbor setting.
Simon Willison
Sep 12
California Brown Pelican
The California Brown Pelican has taken over the Pacifica Pier in San Mateo County, CA, after the pier was shut down in early June due to a cracked concrete walkway that made it unsafe for public access. The pelicans have occupied the area, effectively replacing human use of the pier. The incident highlights how wildlife can quickly reclaim abandoned or unsafe human structures.
Simon Willison
Sep 9
.blend URL Viewer
Simon Willison created a .blend URL Viewer tool that lets users view a Blender model of a Fabergé egg themed after the TV show Pluribus directly in their browser. He generated the egg image using ChatGPT Images 2.5, then fed it to GPT‑6 Astra with a custom Blender skill to produce several .blend files. The viewer, built with JavaScript, is now part of his tools collection for easy access to the resulting 3D model.
Simon Willison
Sep 4
The Pelican comparison grid for Astra is pretty interesting
Simon Willison tested GPT‑6 Astra by generating SVG pelicans riding bicycles at various reasoning levels and compared the results to GPT‑5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna. The Astra pelicans consistently outperformed the other models, especially at low and xhigh reasoning levels, and even the Astra max version produced high‑quality images. Astra also used fewer tokens and was roughly twice as expensive as Sol, yet its low‑level output was cheaper and superior to any Sol model.
arXiv AI
Jun 10
Democratising Camera Trap AI: An Open-Source Model for Detecting UK Mammals
arXiv:2606. 10940v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Camera traps have become a cornerstone of biodiversity monitoring, but the artificial intelligence that turns vast quantities of images into usable ecological data is often locked behind commercial platforms or trained on fauna that does not match that of the British Isles.
Simon Willison
Sep 29
GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price
Simon Willison comments on GPT 6.1‑Sol, describing it as "Near‑Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price." He notes that the model’s pelican illustrations are similar to those of the GPT‑6 family and provides links to the live‑blog of the keynote and to the pelican images. The post is tagged with AI, OpenAI, generative‑AI, LLMs, and playful references to pelican‑riding‑a‑bicycle.
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 1
From crown candidates to neighborhood screening: integrating optical GeoAI and spatial modeling for urban-canopy assessment in Davis, California
arXiv:2608.13856v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Timely urban-canopy information is essential for linking remote sensing with heat, mobility, and neighborhood planning. We developed an optic...
arXiv AI
Jun 2
Planktonzilla: Multimodal dataset and models for understanding plankton ecosystems
arXiv:2606. 00080v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Marine plankton underpin aquatic food webs and play a key role in global CO2 sequestration, making reliable species identification critical for understanding ocean health and climate feedbacks.
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 9
Democratising Camera Trap AI: An Open-Source Model for Detecting UK Mammals
Camera traps have become a cornerstone of biodiversity monitoring, but the artificial intelligence that turns vast quantities of images into usable ecological data is often locked behind commercial platforms or trained on fauna that does not match that of the British Isles. In an attempt to remove barriers and increase uptake, we release an open-source object detection model for 31 classes, 28 common UK mammal and bird species, plus utility classes for humans, calibration poles, and vehicles, drawn from a curated dataset of 48,165 labelled instances assembled from multiple sites over a decade of operational deployment through Conservation AI and its successor, Trap Tracker.
arXiv AI
Jul 31
Multimodal fusion of visual and morphometric features for avian bone classification
arXiv:2607. 26743v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Artificial intelligence has shown considerable potential for archaeological applications, yet its use in zooarchaeology remains limited, particularly for the identification of avian skeletal remains.
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 17
Practical High-Fidelity Novel-View Synthesis of Mounted Lepidoptera
arXiv:2606.31679v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Mounted butterflies are among the most striking objects in natural history collections. However, their beauty is notoriously hard to digitize...