Carrot Weather gets an chatbot powered by ChatGPT
The popular weather forecasting app, Carrot Weather, now has a chatbot. Everyone and everything is using ChatGPT, why should a weather app be any different?
In case you don't know about it, Carrot Weather is an app with a customizable personality. You can set it to be normal, a little snarky, or downright crazy. It's a humorous app, the weather info it provides is mostly accurate, and the interface is pretty well polished.
But most of its features are locked behind a paywall, including something that I consider to be a very basic feature, and is also probably the most useful one, a home screen widget. Many people would gladly pay a one-time fee to unlock the widget, but Carrot Weather doesn't work like that. I'll get to this in a bit.
The latest version of Carrot Weather, 5.10, brings a high-quality radar map for most countries in Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. It also includes access to the Inspector feature, which is exclusive for premium users. The update introduces a chatbot powered by Open AI's ChatGPT language model. It still has Carrot's sassy personality, but that's the charm, right?
To access the chatbot in Carrot Weather, open the app, and tap the Carrot button on the toolbar. You should now see a "Message Carrot" option at the top, with a text box. Tap on it to initiate the chat. There is a caveat to it, you can only chat with the bot 5 times. After the 5-turn limit ends, you will be required to donate some money to get more turns.
This is where I should point out its flaws. Carrot Weather's Premium plan costs $4.99 a month and $19.99 for the annual plan, while the highest Premium Ultra plan costs $39.99. If you think that's costly, wait till you hear this. Carrot Weather's chatbot isn't free, even if you are a Premium or Ultra subscriber. You will need to pay some extra money because the chatbot's API isn't free to use, you may choose to pay for it via the app's Tip Jar. There are various tiers for these donations. Personally, I wouldn't mind this if the app had been completely free to use. But it already requires a premium plan to unlock most features, so why ask for even more money? I'm not a fan of these app subscriptions, they kind of feel like a gacha game or something with an energy-limit, with all these in-app purchases to unlock stuff.
I understand the need to support an app's development in the long-term, and all the additional features that the premium plans offer, in this case the advanced radar maps. But these features for weather enthusiasts, I don't think the expensive subscriptions are justified for an average person's usage, which as I mentioned earlier, could be satisfied with a widget. How often does one check the weather every day, once or twice? In comparison, Bitwarden password manager, which most people would use several times a day, just costs $12 a year.
You cannot change weather sources in Carrot Weather without a premium account, and some of those locked sources are free to use. I'd advise sticking with the free version of the app, but since it doesn't have a widget, you'll need to open it to check the current weather and the forecast. You can download it from the iOS App Store. Or may can use the Apple Weather app on Mac, iPhone, or iPad, it's completely free and works just fine.
Uhh, this has already been possible – I am not sure how but remember my brother telling me about it. I’m not a whatsapp user so not sure of the specifics, but something about sending the image as a file and somehow bypassing the default compression settings that are applied to inbound photos.
He has also used this to share movies to whatsapp groups, and files 1Gb+.
Like I said, I never used whatsapp, but I know 100% this isn’t a “brand new feature”, my brother literally showed me him doing it, like… 5 months ago?
Martin, what happened to those: 12 Comments (https://www.ghacks.net/chatgpt-gets-schooled-by-princeton-university/#comments). Is there a specific justifiable reason why they were deleted?
Hmm, it looks like the gHacks website database is faulty, and not populating threads with their relevant cosponsoring posts.
The page on ghacks this is on represents the best of why it has become so worthless, fill of click-bait junk that it’s about to be deleted from my ‘daily reads’.
It’s really like “Press Release as re-written by some d*ck for clicks…poorly.” And the subjects are laughable. Can’t wait for “How to search for files on Windows”.
> The page on ghacks this is on represents the best of why it has become so worthless, fill of click-bait junk…
Sadly, I have to agree.
Only Martin and Ashwin are worth subscribing to.
Especially Emre Çitak and Shaun are the worst ones.
If ghacks.net intended “Clickbait”, it would mark the end of Ghacks Technology News.
Ghacks doesn’t need crappy clickbaits. Clearly separate articles from newer authors (perhaps AIs and external sales person or external advertising man) as just “Advertisements”!
We, the subscribers of Ghacks, urge Martin to make a decision.
because nevermore wants to “monetize” on every aspect of human life…
“Threads” is like the Walmart of Social Media.
How hard can it be to clone a twitter version of that as well? They’re slow.
Yes, why not mention how large the HD files can be?
Why, not mention what version of WhatsApp is needed?
These omissions make the article feel so bare. If not complete.
Sorry posted on the wrong page.
such a long article for such a simple matter. Worthless article ! waste of time
I already do this by attaching them via the ‘Document’ option.
I don’t know what’s going on here at Ghacks but it’s obvious that something is broken, comments are being mixed whatever the article, I am unable to find some of my later posts neither. :S
Quoting the article,
“As users gain popularity, the value of their tokens may increase, allowing investors to reap rewards.”
Besides, beyond the thrill and privacy risks or not, the point is to know how you gain popularity, be it on social sites as everywhere in life. Is it by being authentic, by remaining faithful to ourselves or is it to have this particular skill which is to understand what a majority likes, just like politicians, those who’d deny to the maximum extent compatible with their ideological partnership, in order to grab as many of the voters they can?
I see the very concept of this Friend.tech as unhealthy, propagating what is already an increasing flaw : the quest for fame. I won’t be the only one to count himself out, definitely.
@John G. is right : my comment was posted on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/23/what-is-friend-tech/] and it appears there but as well here at [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/08/how-to-follow-everyone-on-threads/]
This has been lasting for several days. Fix it or at least provide some explanations if you don’t mind.
> Google Chrome is following in Safari’s footsteps by introducing a new feature that allows users to move the Chrome address bar to the bottom of the screen, enhancing user accessibility and interaction.
Firefox did this long before Safari.
Basically they’ll do anything except fair royalties.