Ridiculous things: The AI is trying to identify my dog

Jessie is the Jack Russel Terrier that we had when we first got married. Admittedly, we picked her up at the SPCA, and this was before there were DNA tests that would tell you what kind of dog she was, so we can’t be sure that she’s a JRT [1]You might know the Jack Russel as the Parson Russel Terrier, the Russel Terrier, or “that ornery creature that won’t let go of the rabbit out in the yard”.

Jessie lived during a time when artificial intelligence was called “spellcheck”.

So now it’s 25 years since we got her and Apple Photos has decided that it’s going to use AI to label my dogs. Which is fine, but I’d really like it to make up its mind.

To that end, I put forward, the many flavors of Jessie.

A brown and white jack russel standing at the end of a sofa to look out the window, overlaid with a text box describing a smooth fox terrier, complete with picture of a tall dog that looks nothing like my very short dog.
Smooth fox terrier…
Same brown and white jack russel, from above. She's laying on a blue rug and chewing a large rope toy next to a table leg. A text box is overlaid on top of her describing a brown and white basset hound, which is pictured in the text box. Her ears aren't nearly that long.
Basset hound?
The same brown and white jack russel standing in front of the leg of a rocking chair, on a brown rug that almost matches her spots, with a text window and picture describing a basenji
Basenji?! Really?!?
A young woman in her 20s with short red hair and glasses watching the same brown and white jack russel chew on a canvas stuffed toy resembling a rolled up newspaper. A text box is overlaid over the dog describing a jack russel terrier that is still taller than my dog.
Finally, a Jack Russel! Thank goodness it didn’t try to guess what I was!

So yeah, apparently the folks making image identifiers are still working on the craft.

Notes

Notes
↑1 You might know the Jack Russel as the Parson Russel Terrier, the Russel Terrier, or “that ornery creature that won’t let go of the rabbit out in the yard”

Author: Anne Gibson

anne gibson is a freelance UX Designer, Content Strategist, and General Troublemaker from outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She's an editor and writer at The Interconnected. She is also published at A List Apart and The Pastry Box, and publishes short fiction when she's not persuading the terriers to stop wrecking things. (The terriers are winning.)