The Carrot Weather app has received a snarky ChatGPT-like chatbot and expanded its detailed radar maps, notifications, and severe weather alerts to more countries.
- What’s happening? Hello meat sack. The best attitude forecasting app (that would be me, Carrot Weather, fool!) now has a chatbot.
- Why care? Because you’ve always wanted AI to script a crime thriller while you’re checking the weather, man.
- What to do? Go back to your miserable life while I continue to rule the climate.
Carrot Weather Unveils Snarky AI Chatbot
The hilarious weather app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac is known for peppering weather forecasts with funny quotes while trading insults. In its latest 5.10 update, Carrot adds several new features, including an AI chatbot inspired by ChatGPT.
You can send a message to the bot asking it difficult questions like ChatGPT OpenAI. Yes, you can use profanity when communicating with the bot. All users receive five messages for free, with more available through Carrot’s Tip Jar feature.
AI Chatbot Personality Customization
You can ask the bot difficult questions, like asking it to play a text-based adventure game or write a crime thriller about due process. If you have ever used ChatGPT, you will feel right at home. Open the app settings to customize the AI personality from Sarcastic, Funny and Confusing to Disgusting, Bitter and Drunk. In addition, character modes such as Bandit, Cowboy, Pirate, Soviet, and Fake News are available.
As you might have guessed, fake news will spout nonsense instead of answering your questions. On the other hand, choosing Gangster will make Carrot sound like a 1920s gangster. The chatbot gives all users five messages for free (according to our tests), and more can be purchased through Carrot’s Tip Jar.
Weather alerts for other countries
Carrot Weather 5.10 also expands support for government weather alerts and weather notifications in more countries. Weather push notifications are now available in Canada, Israel and most of Europe.
This also includes support for monitoring multiple locations with the ability to manage critical alerts and turn off filters. Keep in mind that you must be a Premium subscriber to receive government-issued weather push notifications.
Thunderstorm warnings
In addition to these improvements, Carrot Weather 5.10 allows users in Europe, Central America and the Caribbean to receive alerts for upcoming lightning strikes.
You can customize this feature by disabling lightning notifications for specific locations in the Mute Filters tab in Carrot. The privilege of receiving timely alerts for upcoming strikes in your area requires a Premium Ultra subscription.
Advanced Radar Maps
Carrot users in Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan can also access high quality Carrot radar images. When viewing these detailed radar maps, you can turn individual layers on and off for parameters such as temperature and precipitation.
Users in the above regions can also change the color palette of the radar between preset themes and use the Inspector feature (subscription required). Carrot developer Brian Muller confirmed to The Verge that the new regions will show up on the minimap “in the next month or two”.
New Products for Radar Stations
But what if you want to explore the radar at a much higher resolution or update it more frequently? Well, clearer radar maps and more frequent radar view updates are available as part of the individual radar mode for paying Premium Ultra members.
And if you find yourself nervously tracking an oncoming major storm, Carrot Weather 5.10 now lets you use NEXRAD Tier 3 products like Storm Total Accumulation to track severe weather across the United States.
NEXRAD stands for Next Generation Weather Radar, a network of 160 sophisticated weather radars operated by NOAA’s National Weather Service.
Prices and Availability
Carrot Weather 5.10 is available free of charge to existing app users. Carrot Weather is free to download, but advanced features require a subscription: Premium Ultra ($10/month or $40/year) or Premium ($5/month/$20/year).
The app is available for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.
The iPhone and iPad version requires iOS and iPadOS 13.0 or later. Mac version requires an Apple Silicon Mac with an M1 chip or later and macOS 12.5 or later.