That viral AI weathercaster didn't come from a TV station

Videos of a weathercaster, which turned out to be AI-generated, have gone viral in Korea due to her attire.

Images of an AI weathercaster reading a forecast have spread across X and other social media in Korea, along with the claim that a television broadcaster had swapped out its human presenter for the computer-generated one.

The video was created by the YouTube channel of weather information company Kweather, which sells weather and air-quality services. 

The presenter is a virtual persona billed as the “Kim Si-a AI weathercaster.” The original video carries an on-screen notice that it was made using generative AI.

The character gestures at a weather map as she talks, and the on-screen layout closely mirrors a real forecast segment, enough to make people think that it's the real deal — especially when awkward movements are harder to notice on a smaller phone screen or not part of a screen capture. 

For some social media users, the clip was a marker of how quickly the ground is shifting.

“Won't news anchors be swapped out for AI casters before long?” one wrote. “We've reached the age where AI reads you the weather too,” read another.

Others were less taken with the change. A good deal of the criticism landed on how the character had been dressed.

“Did they really have to put her in that?” one comment read. “It's an outdated setup that pushes looks ahead of information,” another wrote.

A separate complaint was that the illusion does not quite hold.

“You can still tell it's AI,” one user wrote. “It's jarring enough that I can't concentrate on it,” said another.

BY SHIN HYE-YEON [[email protected]]