How AI helps conservationists better understand and protect giraffes

Monica Bond and Derek Lee’s “love and obsession” for giraffes started during a trip to Uganda in 2005. Since then, they said, their mission was clear: return to Africa and lead the “world’s greatest giraffe study.” Five years later, the duo co-founded the nonprofit Wild Nature Institute, based in Tanzania, where the Masai giraffe (Giraffa tippelskirchi) is the national animal. Here, their team has focused on identifying individual giraffes based on the unique patterns on their bodies. For years, the team did the work manually, after which they experimented with different iterations of technology. Neither approach yielded the results they were looking for, however. Now, artificial intelligence models — developed in collaboration with Microsoft’s AI For Good Lab — are helping the team speed