Researchers tested artificial intelligence software to count visitors at Giant's Causeway using drone footage. The site lies near Bushmills in County Antrim.

The software analysed commercially available drone video but produced inaccurate results. Hexagonal rock columns resembled human figures from above and led to over-counting.

A team from the University of Glasgow applied the open-source yolo-crowd model, designed for crowd counting and face detection. Performance dropped in this environment.

Rocks and people shared contours, shadows, and colours from a top-down view. Object detection depends on such patterns.

Training data lacked sufficient examples from Giant's Causeway or similar sites. This caused incorrect generalisation by the model.

The test formed part of a UK government project on digital tools for visitor numbers at non-ticketed sites. Future success requires more training data and higher resolution footage.