Months before it mysteriously evaporated into thin air, Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency gutted the National Weather Service, causing severe staffing shortages.
The Trump administration last summer promised to rehire most of the approximately 550 displaced DOGE workers, effectively acknowledging DOGE's overreach, but DOGE offices across the country are still struggling with many unfilled roles.
And given this latest failure, those who remain, relying on flawed AI technology to come up with broken visuals for their social media feeds, appear to be struggling to keep up.
as washington post The National Weather Service has reportedly posted an AI-generated weather map that shows the names of towns in Idaho.
The graphic predicts that “southerly winds will blow tonight'' and shows a map listing the names of non-existent towns, such as “Orangeottild'' and “Watta Bod''. An unintentionally hilarious hallucination that sounds more like an old dirty joke than an actual place where people live.
The artwork in question was removed on Monday. Wapo I reported it to the agency.
Experts say this egregious failure could undermine trust in the agency and cause confusion.
It also perfectly highlights the glaring shortcomings of AI technology, which continues to cause similar embarrassing incidents even as the Trump administration continues to push hard for government agencies to adopt the technology. Last month, for example, the company hired 1,000 experts for its “tech force” to build AI.
But despite all the enthusiasm and resources being allocated to advancing technology, inexplicable and easily avoidable mistakes are falling through the cracks, as the latest incident shows.
This is not the first time the NWS office has been caught posting lazy AI statements on social media. In November, a Rapid City, South Dakota, service drew ridicule after posting a map with illegible place names.
NWS reported Wapo It said in a statement that while using AI in public content is not common, it is not technically prohibited.
“Recently, our regional office used AI to create a base map to display forecast information, but the map incorrectly displayed city names that were difficult to read,” NWS spokeswoman Erika Grow-Say told the paper. “The map was quickly corrected and updated social media posts were distributed.”
Cei added that “NWS will continue to carefully evaluate the consequences of deploying AI to ensure accuracy and efficiency, and will discontinue its use in scenarios where AI is not effective.”
But the damage has already been done. Experts warn that agencies like the NWS could cause significant damage to their reputation and authority as flawed generative AI tools continue to be inadvertently used without the necessary follow-up work to check for hallucinations.
“I'm not in a position to judge whether there's a way to use AI to fill that gap,” said Chris Groninger, a weather and climate communications expert. Wapo. “But I worry that building a town that doesn’t exist will undermine or undermine the public trust that we need to continue to build.”
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