Foraging for “wild food” remains all the rage, with urbanites inspired by TV chefs descending on woodland in search of orange birch boletes or powdery brittlegills for dinner-party kudos.
The Mushroom app $7.99 (£6) seemed the perfect fit for beginners, promising to harness “revolutionary artificial intelligence” to “identify any mushroom instantly with just a pic”.
Its creator Nicholas Sheriff, a product designer in Silicon Valley, wanted to help prevent poisonings after amateur foragers in northern California ate death caps last year and became very ill. But when mycologists came across the program, they warned that it could be deadly and the premise was flawed: one picture was not enough to tell edible mushrooms apart from toxic lookalikes.
An experienced forager, they said, would study mushrooms from several angles and consider factors such as discolouration and smell. In trials by Gizmodo, the app failed to identify common button or chestnut mushrooms.
As a result of the outcry, the app’s name was changed to Truffle, with different marketing claims. Experts pointed out though that “false truffles” could still be toxic.