National Weather Service’s AI translation project lacks long-term plan, watchdog says
The Government Accountability Office’s analysis — released on Monday as residents in dozens of states dig out from a massive winter storm that swept through much of the eastern half of the country — said AI “could play a key role in expanding the accessibility of weather products,” but added that the translation project is hampered by some challenges, including funding issues and widespread adoption.
According to Census Bureau data that GAO included in the report, approximately 26 million people in the U.S. have a limited ability to read, speak, write or understand English. To better reach these non-English speakers, NWS first began using AI to translate some of its services into other languages in 2021. The weather service has been using AI to translate some of its forecasts, watches and warnings into five languages: Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Samoan.
“About a quarter of its weather forecast offices and the National Hurricane Center were participating in this project as of December 2025,” GAO said. “Officials said using AI could help NWS disseminate information in other languages more quickly and at lower cost.”
These AI-translated products do not apply to the Emergency Alert System or Wireless Emergency Alerts, although the Federal Communications Commission has adopted requirements for wireless carriers to support WEAs in English and 14 other languages.
“NWS does not use AI translations to provide Spanish WEA messages because of limitations on the characters that wireless carriers support,” the report said, adding that the weather service “collaborated with FEMA and FCC to develop templates for its Spanish WEA messages that avoid using unsupported characters.”
NWS officials told the watchdog that the agency’s goal is to make AI translations “available through NWS’s normal dissemination channels, such as the NWS website and NOAA Weather Radio,” but that the agency has not fully fleshed out these efforts and the broader deployment of these tools remains somewhat unclear.
“According to these officials, NWS has not developed a long-term plan for the AI translation project because of current uncertainty on how the project will fit into broader NWS efforts, such as the redesign of its website,” GAO said. “Furthermore, NWS has not updated its plan for translating its weather products because it has not been required to do so by Congress, according to the officials.”
The watchdog recommended that the weather agency develop an updated implementation plan for its AI translation project that includes “measurable performance goals tied to specific time frames; resources needed to achieve each goal, such as funding, workforce, and IT needs; and internal and external factors that could affect NWS’s ability to achieve its goals and strategies to address these factors.”
NOAA — the agency that oversees NWS — agreed with the watchdog’s recommendations and said it would “develop an updated implementation plan for the AI language translation project as part of a comprehensive language access plan.”
NWS’ AI translation project is also continuing amid the White House’s ongoing push to prioritize English-only government services, following President Donald Trump’s executive order last March declaring English the official language of the U.S.
The Justice Department issued a memo last July that built upon the president’s order by directing agencies to reduce multilingual services deemed “non-essential,” and to use technology and AI “to produce cost-effective methods for bridging language barriers and reducing inefficiencies with the translation process.”
GAO’s report noted that “NWS did not request funds for the AI language translation project in fiscal year 2026 because it was awaiting guidance on the implementation of Executive Order 14224, which designated English as the official language of the U.S.,” but that the agency’s FY26 congressional budget justification “stated that NWS would continue to translate key products into Spanish, Samoan, Chinese, Vietnamese, and French.”
NWS has also contracted with a commercial vendor to develop its AI translation tools, with the agency allocating approximately $2.7 million total on the project in fiscal years 2022 through 2025. The weather service’s AI translation contract expired in March 2025, GAO said, which led to a brief lapse in services until NWS signed a revised contract roughly three weeks later.
“The revised contract has a reduced scope, and the annual contract amount decreased from about $1 million to $600,000, NWS headquarters officials said,” according to the report. “NWS plans to continue translations in the five previously supported languages, but the agency will not be able to start developing AI models for additional languages before April 2026. NWS also has limited ability to update and improve the language translation models under the new contract, according to the officials.”
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