NASA is Working together with Microsoft Creating an AI chatbot designed to make it easier to access and understand scientific data about Earth. The instrument, called Earth CoPilot, will be able to answer questions about our planet by summarizing NASA's extensive geospatial information into easily digestible responses.
To build the tool, NASA is integrating AI into its data repository, allowing Earth Copilot to refer to this information when answering questions, such as “What was the impact of Hurricane Ian on Sanibel Island?” or “How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected air quality in the US?”
NASA aims to “democratize” access to scientific data with the launch of Earth Copilot, as obtaining and understanding information within NASA's databases is currently more difficult for people who are not researchers or scientists.
“For many, finding and extracting insights requires navigating technical interfaces, understanding data formats, and mastering the complexities of geospatial analysis – specialized skills that very few non-technical users possess “, said Tyler Bryson, Microsoft's corporate vice president of health and public sector industries, in the announcement. “AI can streamline this process, reducing the time to extract insights from Earth's data to just seconds.
Right now, Earth CoPilot is available only to NASA scientists and researchers, who will assess the instrument's capabilities. They will then explore its integration into NASA's Visualization, Exploration, and Data Analysis (VEDA) platform, which already provides access to some of the agency's data.