Microsoft confirms its creating a new AI that's trained on NASA's 100 petabytes of Earth data

NASA has been capturing valuable data on our planet for many years now, and according to a recent blog post from Microsoft, the US space agency has gathered more than 100 petabytes of data on various Earth-related scientific domains.

Microsoft has announced that it's partnering with NASA to create a new AI chatbot that will be trained on NASA's mountain of Earth data. The goal of the new AI chatbot is to make it easier to shift through the plethora of data NASA has gathered, making it easier to answer questions about the planet. The new AI chatbot will be called Earth Copilot, and its purpose is to "democratize" access to scientific data, while also developing a keen understanding of the information within NASA's databases.

Tyler Bryson, Microsoft's corporate vice president of health and public sector industries, explained in the announcement that those interested in acquiring Earth-related answers through scientific data have to know how to navigate technical interfaces, understand how to correctly interpret data, and have already acquired other various specialized skills. However, with the implementation of Earth Copilot, users will be able to engage with the chatbot through natural language and then be presented with answers cleanly and concisely. This would considerably speed up the time it takes to gain an insight.

"The vision behind this collaboration was to leverage AI and cloud technologies to bring Earth's insights to communities that have been underserved, where access to data can lead to tangible improvements," said Minh Nguyen, Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft. "By enabling users to interact with the data through simple, plain language queries, we're helping to democratize access to spaceborne information."

"Azure's robust suite of services, including machine learning, data analytics and scalable cloud infrastructure, powers this AI prototype," said Juan Carlos López, former NASA engineer and current Azure Specialist at Microsoft. "We've designed the system to handle complex queries and large datasets efficiently, ensuring that users can quickly find the information they need without getting bogged down by technical complexities. Our goal was to create a seamless, scalable solution that could evolve as NASA's data, tools and applications grow."