Citizen science has played a central role in tracking periodical cicadas for over 180 years, evolving from newspaper letters to smartphone apps. Since 2019, the Cicada Safari app enabled the public to submit geotagged cicada photos, resulting in hundreds of thousands of records during major emergences. To manage and verify this massive influx of images, students and researchers integrated artificial intelligence (AI), using the YOLO (You Only Look Once) computer vision model. By applying techniques from unsupervised machine learning, they trained the system to recognize cicadas based on patterns in annotated data. This blend of emerging technology, public participation, and STEM education demonstrates how citizen science can scale through AI tools—enhancing both scientific discovery and public engagement with the natural world.