BirdLens: Side Hustle

What I Built I built BirdLens, a simple AI tool that identifies birds from a photo. The idea came from a simple problem: you see a bird while travelling or walking outside, but you don't know what it is. With BirdLens, you can upload a bird photo and get the predicted species along with useful information about it. Demo How I Built It I used: React.js for the frontend Python + FastAPI for the backend Hugging Face for the AI model An open-weight bird classification model for identifying the bird Why Open-Source AI? I wanted the AI part of the project to be something I could actually experiment with and control. Instead of depending completely on a paid vision API, I can use an open model, change it, try other models, and potentially run it locally. This can also help keep the cost low and gives me more control over how BirdLens works. For me, that's the main reason open-source AI is interesting: I can build on top of it instead of only using it as a service. What's Next? I wa