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As Typhoon Bavi nears, Chinese bloggers warned amateur AI forecasts may be illegal
Online ‘weather enthusiasts’ in China are posting typhoon predictions, prompting criticism from state media
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Dannie Pengin Beijing
As residents of eastern China brace for Typhoon Bavi to make landfall, bloggers have turned to AI weather models to post forecasts on social media, prompting criticism from state media, which warned that the amateur predictions could fall foul of the law.
State broadcaster China Media Group reported on Thursday that some bloggers claiming to be “weather enthusiasts” were issuing forecasts using data from various open-source artificial intelligence weather models.
Some have even begun offering predictions for specific locations for a fee, according to the broadcaster, also known as Voice of China.
On Thursday evening, a blogger from Shandong province posted predictions about Typhoon Bavi on social media, saying there was a “90 per cent chance” the storm could move deep into Shandong, based on tracking models.
Under the Meteorology Law of the People’s Republic of China, public weather alerts are subject to a centralised release system, and official meteorological stations are the only authorised issuers of forecasts and severe weather warnings.
Huang Xiang, a researcher at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST), explained to the broadcaster that the centralised system was vital to prevent public confusion.
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