Douglas Adams, the author of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, once came up with a set of rules to describe our reactions to technologies. He wrote:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.
So your attitude towards AI might depend on your age. However, like all aspects of life, AI is coming at surfing, and from all angles. It is being used to gather information on wave patterns, weather conditions, water temperature, surfer movements, competition scores, simulation, media output, imagery, virtual reality and much more.
But to be forewarned is to be forearmed. And so we’ve collected the categories where AI is hitting surfing and surfers: the good, the bad, and the scary.
Surf Forecasting
Surf forecasters have been using AI to present increasingly accurate information in a more tailored way. Surf-Forecast have an AI tool called Rusty, which gathers all the forecast variables for more than 7,000 spots and packages it up in an easy-to-read summary for each location.
Premium Surfline Users can now see wave distribution (number and height of waves, and how many ridden) to predict whether a spot will be more or less crowded in the coming hours.
The concern for those models is that eventually you won’t need them. You can ask Claude for the current forecast for your local, and it will scan, scrape and spit out the info, without handing over coin or creating an account. You can’t do that right now, but as AI progresses, will that change?
In other, bigger picture, positive news, Denmark’s Niels Bohr Institute recently analysed a colossal database of over a billion waves (the equivalent of 700 years of wave height and sea state data) to study rogue waves. From there, an algorithm found the source (it’s called linear superposition) and so could predict the conditions in which they form. For the shipping industry, this could save billions of dollars and lives. And imagine the vlog if the Florence brothers get their hands on the data.
Related: A Surf Forecast You Can Hang On Your Wall?
Shark Risk Assessment
New platforms are leveraging sophisticated artificial intelligence methods, combining comprehensive historical shark attack records with precise marine weather forecasts to provide reliable shark attack risk assessments.
They are basically a neural network that finds the relationship between the 30+ different marine weather variable points, the attack location, and the date, then assigns a risk category out of 100. The marine weather forecast data points include such elements as upwelling events, water temps, visibility and chlorophyll levels, all factors in historic shark attacks. The surf forecast might be five stars, but if the shark risk is 5/5, you will need to make your own algorithm if you will paddle out.
Related: Great White Sharks Circle Swimmer in Wild Southern California Encounter (Video)
Fitness & Training
“It’s a clean slate. Instead of surfers coming to coaches after a few years and a bag load of bad habits, we can provide highly-specific training and technique feedback you can get not only after each session but each wave.”
That was Andy King, former coach to Mick Fanning and Gabriel Medina and now Head Coach at Flowstate, a system designed for wave pools that can detect, identify, track, and film surfers as they ride waves. The AI software recognizes the distinct style and movement pattern of each surfer. Coaches like King then develop tailored coaching packages based on the individual surfer. “I believe that a single day of rigorous training in the pool equates to a month of training in the ocean,” reckons King.
That is a step up from surf coaches filming their charges with a handycam all day on the beach, then watching it on the Dell back at home.
Related: 2026 SURFER Awards: Best Surfwear of the Year
Surfboard Manufacturing
AI improving quality control and production automation aren’t the sexy edge of the AI surfboard wedge, but they should lead to better boards, made faster with lower prices and less waste.
The future might add bigger design revolutions. AI algorithms can already analyze data on wave dynamics and surfer movements, so soon it will be able to create surfboard designs based on this feedback to maximize an individual’s performance.
While computer-based theoretical fluid dynamics has been used to test surfboards, AI could do that in real life. You could feed the machine 1000 waves at your local surf spot, and if matched with augmented surfboard design, it could spit out a board tailor-made for your style and the style of waves you catch.
It ain’t exactly Baddy Trealor hand-shaping a board in the morning and testing at Angourie in the afternoon, but the customisation based on real data could lead to all sorts of innovation; or just a million more Wavestorms.
Related: Can an Algae Problem Fix Surfboard Construction’s Oldest Paradox?
Content, Social Media and Journalism
I wrote this article; I really did. Though I did put it through Grammarly, an AI-based editing program that fleeced all my typoes and spellingg mistakes.
Yet AI, used in large language models like ChatGPT, doesn’t produce facts; it predicts language. Or as the journalist Samantha Floreani wrote, “We can think of ChatGPT as an automated mansplaining machine – often wrong, but always confident.”
The Onion’s CEO Ben Collins maintains a strict anti-AI policy in its newsroom. Makes sense for an online site that had a 2004 article titled, “Scientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix”. Collins has publicly criticised generative AI tools for lacking comedic timing or genuine creative insight, famously noting that “AI is just not funny.” Something that at least we have in common.
On social media, you’ll know it uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to determine which content is most relevant to each user based on their past interactions with the app. That might explain the post on my feed of a large-breasted girl, holding a six-channel surfboard at G-Land, talking about Liverpool Football Club, listening to Get Down Services whilst eating edibles off a novel by Kevin Barry.
And with that, it’s probably time to turn the machine off. Eliezer Yudkowsky, the American computer scientist and skimboarder, said, “By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.”
Related: Influencer Obliterated by Giant Shorebreak During Bali Photoshoot (Video)
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