The Weather Company has introduced a new artificial intelligence-powered production tool designed to help local television meteorologists create weather reports and related programming for broadcast television, streaming services and digital platforms.
The product, called Weather Story Assist, is available through the company’s Max Cloud platform and uses AI to identify relevant weather information, archived content and potential story angles based on a single forecast.
The Weather Company says the technology is intended to reduce the time meteorologists spend preparing reports, searching for supporting materials and adapting weather coverage for different distribution platforms.
Weather Story Assist can identify historical weather information, records and other supporting data that meteorologists can incorporate into their reports. The company says each suggested storyline is linked to its original source, allowing newsroom employees to verify the information before using it.
The system can also search a station group’s existing Max Cloud content library for relevant graphics, archived video and other materials that support a particular forecast or weather-related story. Those recommendations are designed to reflect a station’s established editorial approach and visual branding.
“Weather Story Assist lets a station’s weather team stand out on every screen, not just the six o’clock news,” Steve Ward, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Media at The Weather Company, said in a statement. “By eliminating manual search and prep work, we’re helping station groups deliver richer local storytelling and expand their digital presence, all while keeping the experts who know their local markets best in complete control.”
The software operates under a meteorologist-in-the-loop model, meaning AI-generated scripts, graphics and other content cannot be published or broadcast without explicit approval from a meteorologist. The company also says the system operates entirely within each station group’s private Max Cloud environment.
Weather Story Assist uses a broadcaster’s proprietary content, brand guidelines and usage patterns to develop recommendations without sharing that information with other customers or using it to train external AI platforms.
The Weather Company plans to introduce three additional capabilities to the platform, including three-tiered personalization, cross-market content sharing and automated adaptation of weather programming for vertical video and other digital formats. The cross-market sharing capability is intended to help television station groups reuse relevant weather content across multiple local markets, while the automated formatting tools will support distribution across different platforms. The company did not provide a timetable for those additional features.
Pricing and other commercial terms were not disclosed.
