Carrot Weather app introduces snarky ChatGPT chatbot

Carrot Weather, the forecasting app best known for its amusing (and often sassy) weather updates, has introduced a ChatGPT-based chatbot that allows users to chat directly with the app’s irreverent personality using as much profanity as they can stand. Releasing globally today on iOS, version 5.10 of Carrot also expands its high-quality radar maps, notifications, and weather alerts to more countries.

You can ask the new Carrot chatbot for weather updates — which it’ll provide with the app’s usual scalding insults — alongside more recreational interactions we’ve come to expect from ChatGPT’s generational AI, such as asking the bot to play a text-based adventure game or write a script for a crime drama. Users who find the chatbot’s responses too antagonistic can adjust the Carrot AI’s personality to vary how it’ll behave, with options for helpful, suave, depressed, angry, drunken, and more.

There are also character-driven modes like Mobster, Cowboy, Pirate, and Soviet for a more roleplay-like experience, and uh, Fake News if you want the bot to ignore your questions entirely in favor of spouting nonsense. The chatbot provides all Carrot users with five messages for free (according to our tests), with more available to purchase via Carrot’s Tip Jar.

The 5.10 update also rolls out push notifications to Premium account members ($4.99 a month or $19.99 annually) for government-issued weather alerts in Canada, Israel, and most of Europe, including support for Critical alerts for life-threatening weather events and monitoring multiple locations. Lightning warnings are also now available for Premium Ultra subscribers ($9.99 a month or $39.99 annually) in Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean, alerting users of nearby lightning strikes in the area. Specific notifications can be muted by heading into the Mute Filters tab within the app’s settings.

Carrot’s radar view, a map that displays forecast layers tracking weather conditions like precipitation, has been expanded across Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and most of Europe. Just like US users, anyone in these expanded regions can access the app’s Inspector feature (which requires Premium Ultra membership) and switch the radar color palette between preselected themes. The new regions currently don’t show on the app’s mini-map, Home Screen widget, or Apple Watch, but Carrot developer Brian Mueller has confirmed to The Verge that these should be available “in the next month or two.”

Finally, Carrot is adding support for level 3 products from Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) — a network of 160 advanced weather radars operated by the NOAA National Weather Service — such as storm total accumulation to provide detailed tracking for severe weather in the US. This feature falls under Carrot’s Individual Radar Station Mode for Premium Ultra members, which refreshes the app’s radar view more frequently and displays the radar in a higher resolution, giving users more timely and detailed information when monitoring storms.