Facial recognition for wildlife is something that I would like to see where a one-way function just gave birds and other animals names.
So imagine that you regularly take pictures of the view where you live and the phone-camera-app just identifies wildlife in the scene and gives names to creatures in the scene. If the algorithm is consistent then you could 'see' who had turned up to the bird table, for instance.
In this way the birds wouldn't just be random birds but over time you could get to know them and spot regular faces. Currently who knows if the squirrels you see are the same ones that you saw yesterday. The fox that you see, is it always the same one? If the facial recognition for foxes identified and 'hashed' to 'Fred' every day then, if another fox turns up, e.g. hashed to 'Betty', then you would know that 'Fred' was not alone.
Now if the sightings went to a database then you could work out where 'Fred' or 'Betty' roamed, how old they were and start to look out for them.
To us all animals within their species look the same but if you study them then you do get to spot and identify individuals. AI is bound to be better at doing this than us and could be used to effortlessly identify our fellow creatures on earth so we can appreciate them and start to care for them.
