Hurricane season: be careful of AI slop weather maps on social media

Generative AI can mimic scientific imagery to produce realistic-looking graphics like weather maps – but be careful, these often are not accurate representations of reality and can contain hallucinations.

That was the case for several AI-generated graphics that posts falsely claimed showed the trajectory of hurricane Isaias as it made landfall in the southern United States on October 9, 2026.

While weather forecasters increasingly use AI to analyze huge amounts of historic data to improve forecasts, that is not what publicly-available chatbots use to produce images based on user prompts.

Music: Audio Network