// THE VERGE — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
My brief romance with an AI bird feeder
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It started off promising enough. Dozens of tiny, colorful birds were drawn to my garden just a few weeks after I mounted a $350 $269 Kiwibit Bird Feeder 2 Pro. “Looks like Great Tit!” read the first AI-driven alert sent to my phone. “Looks like Eurasian Blue Tit!” read another. I chuckled, still waiting for adulthood to kick in.
This went on for days. Hundreds of miniature tits came to snack on expensive sunflower seeds already husked. They’d skulk about in nearby trees before flittering in to grab a single seed to be safely enjoyed in the canopy above.
I took great delight in my new house guests. I admired them in crisp 4K HDR video recordings. I looked for unique markings in the hope of naming my new feral pets. I clicked deeper into the Kiwibit app to read about my visitors’ migration habits, where they nest, and what they like to eat. It was all going swell until he arrived.
“Looks like Common Wood Pigeon!” came the alert. All I saw was a battleship-gray blob obscuring the live camera feed. The winged rat was so fat and imposing that he blocked the lens. Ugh, no, go back to the tourists!