The Singapore National Parks Board (NParks), Microsoft and Conservation International have come together to launch Fin Finder, a mobile application that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to visually identify illegally traded shark and ray species.

The Fin Finder app which was created in just 9 months, is a complex AI and cloud-based mobile application that runs on Microsoft Azure.

The app will be used by NParks officers to combat illegal wildlife trade.

According to reports, there are about 1,000 species of sharks and rays in the world, of which 30 species are listed as endangered, and their trade is regulated.

In Singapore, more than 160,000 kg of fins from endangered sharks and rays listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) have entered the borders between 2012 and 2020.

Currently, the process of inspection requires officers to collect the fins from each shipment for DNA testing to determine its species and this can take up to an average of one week.

With Fin Finder, the process is optimised and cut down to seconds of the time required to filter out possibly illegal fins.

Officers will be able to take photos of fins that will be matched against a database of over 15,000 shark and ray fin images via an AI-driven algorithm in the app.