TECH

'Thermal diode' design promises to improve heat regulation, prolonging battery life

New technology from University of Houston researchers could improve the way devices manage heat, thanks to a technique that allows heat to flow in only one direction. The innovation is known as thermal rectification, and was developed by Bo Zhao, an award-winning and internationally recognized engineering professor at the Cullen College of Engineering, and his doctoral student Sina Jafari Ghalekohneh. The work is published in Physical Review Research.

This new technology gives engineers a new way to control radiative heat with the same precision that electronic diodes control electrical currents, which means longer-lasting batteries for cell phones, electric vehicles and even satellites. It also has the potential to change our approach to AI data centers.

"This will be a very useful technology for thermal management and for building a logical system for radiative heat flow," said Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. "For example, you would be able to keep your cell phone's battery at a comfortable temperature without overheating it, especially if it's being used in a very hot environment."

Prior to this discovery, traditional materials allowed radiative heat to travel freely in multiple directions, creating challenges for electronics, vehicles and energy systems to stay cool under stress. Zhao's technology pushes heat flow forward and is completely blocked from moving in the opposite direction.

The way Zhao's team accomplished this was by using semiconductor material placed under a magnetic field, which changes how energy moves at the microscopic level and allows heat flow to be directed with more control than previously possible.

Schematic of the system consisting of nonreciprocal surfaces. Credit: Physical Review Research (2025)

From rectifiers to heat circulators...Additionally, Zhao's team is developing a device known as a circulator, which pushes radiative heat to move in a continuous loop in only one direction. This could improve next-generation energy technologies that rely on radiative heat transfer.

"Basically, you have a hot side, a cold side and something in the middle," Zhao said. "If you look at a triangle, you want to have heat to transport counterclockwise from surface one to surface two, then surface two to surface three—you can't have it go from two to one. It essentially creates a heat loop."

The team's success isn't limited to radiative heat transfer. In a companion study published in Physical Review B, Zhao and his team demonstrated that similar principles can induce asymmetric thermal conductivity in materials and enable conduction heat rectification. This specific finding bridges the gap to everyday electronics, offering a potential solution for the conductive heat generated by high-performance microchips and batteries.

Towards real-world applications...These concepts have so far only been demonstrated theoretically, but Zhao aims to build experimental platforms to show the innovation in action. Once developed, the technology could have important implications for consumer technology ranging well beyond cell phones. For example, electric vehicles would be able to maintain a stable temperature to operate safely and efficiently.

Zhao expects the technology to be particularly valuable for space systems, where satellite electronics must stay cool despite constant exposure to sunlight. It will allow internal heat to escape while blocking solar heat from entering, thus improving reliability and reducing the risk of overheating.

Bo Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, expects his heat regulating technology to be a game changer for devices ranging from cell phones to satellites. Credit: University of Houston

Potential to reshape AI in space...And although the technology was not explicitly developed with AI in mind, Zhao speculated that the technology could help regulate heat in AI hardware, which tends to have high demand for thermal management.

That could create new opportunities for the development of AI data centers in outer space, where its vacuum lacks air for convection and makes shedding heat difficult. This, coupled with the technology's potential to better regulate solar power, could take humanity's AI prowess to new frontiers.

"This is a very innovative technology," Zhao said. "Nobody has done it, so we're very excited about it."

Provided by University of Houston

DIGITAL LIFE

Creative talent: Has AI knocked humans out?

Are generative artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT truly creative? A research team led by Professor Karim Jerbi from the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal, and including AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, also a professor at Université de Montréal, has just published the largest comparative study ever conducted on the creativity of large language models versus humans.

Published in Scientific Reports, the findings reveal that generative AI has reached a major milestone: it can now surpass average human creativity. However, the most creative individuals still clearly outperform even the best AI systems.

AI reaches the threshold of average human creativity...The study tested the creativity of several large language models (including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others) and compared their performance with that of 100,000 human participants. The results mark a turning point: some AI models, such as GPT-4, now exceed the average creative performance observed in humans on tasks of divergent linguistic creativity.

"Our study shows that some AI systems based on large language models can now outperform average human creativity on well-defined tasks," explains Professor Jerbi.

"This result may be surprising—even unsettling—but our study also highlights an equally important observation: even the best AI systems still fall short of the levels reached by the most creative humans."

Analyses conducted by the study's two co-first authors—postdoctoral researcher Antoine Bellemare-Pépin (Université de Montréal) and Ph.D. candidate François Lespinasse (Université Concordia)—reveal a new and intriguing reality. While some generative AI systems now surpass average human creativity, the highest levels of creativity remain distinctly human.

In fact, the average performance of the most creative half of participants exceeds that of all AI models tested, and the top 10% of the most creative individuals open an even wider gap.

"We developed a rigorous framework that allows us to compare human and AI creativity using the same tools, based on data from more than 100,000 participants, in collaboration with Jay Olson from the University of Toronto," says Professor Jerbi, who is also an associate professor at Mila.

How do you measure human and AI creativity?...To compare human creativity with that of AI systems, the research team relied on several complementary approaches. The main one is the Divergent Association Task (DAT), a tool used in psychology to measure divergent creativity—the ability to generate many, varied, and original ideas from a single starting point.

Developed by study co-author Jay Olson, the DAT asks participants—human or AI—to produce ten words that are as semantically different from one another as possible. For example, a highly creative participant might suggest: "galaxy, fork, freedom, algae, harmonica, quantum, nostalgia, velvet, hurricane, photosynthesis."

Crucially, performance on this task in humans also reflects performance on other well-established creativity tests, used in idea generation, writing, and creative problem solving.

In other words, although the task is language-based, it does not simply measure vocabulary skills: it engages general cognitive mechanisms of creative thinking, relevant far beyond the linguistic domain. Another major advantage is that the test is quick—taking only two to four minutes—and easily accessible online to the general public.

Following this logic, the researchers then asked whether AI performance on this very simple task—generating a small set of semantically distinct words—would generalize to more complex creative activities closer to real-world creative practices.

They therefore directly compared AI models and human participants on creative writing tasks, including haiku composition (a short three-line poetic form), movie plot summaries, and short stories. Here again, the most skilled human creators retained a clear advantage, even though AI systems can sometimes outperform average human creativity.

Is AI creativity a matter of tuning?...These findings naturally led the researchers to a key question: can AI creativity be modulated? The study shows that it can—notably by adjusting the model's temperature, a technical parameter that controls how predictable or daring the generated responses are.

At low temperatures, AI produces cautious and predictable outputs; at higher temperatures, it introduces more randomness, takes greater risks, and encourages the system to move beyond well-trodden paths, generating more varied and original associations.

The study also shows that how instructions are phrased strongly influences AI creativity. For instance, a prompting strategy based on etymology—encouraging the model to draw on the origins and structure of words—leads to less obvious associations and higher creativity scores.

Together, these findings highlight a central point: AI creativity depends closely on how humans guide and parameterize these systems, making human–AI interaction a key element of the creative process.

Will human creators be replaced?...These results provide a nuanced perspective on concerns about the potential replacement of creative workers by artificial intelligence. While some AI systems can now rival human creativity on specific tasks, the study also underscores the current limits of machines and the central role of humans in creativity.

"Even though AI can now reach human-level creativity on certain tests, we need to move beyond this misleading sense of competition," says Professor Jerbi. "Generative AI has, above all, become an extremely powerful tool in the service of human creativity: it will not replace creators, but profoundly transform how they imagine, explore, and create—for those who choose to use it."

Rather than announcing the disappearance of creative professions, the study invites us to rethink AI as a creative assistant, capable of expanding possibilities for exploration and inspiration. The future of creativity may lie less in opposition between humans and machines than in new forms of creative collaboration, where AI enriches human ingenuity instead of replacing it.

"By directly confronting human and machine capabilities, studies like ours push us to rethink what we mean by creativity," concludes Professor Jerbi.

Provided by University of Montreal

TECH

How bee brains are shaping next-generation computer chips

Bees navigate their surroundings with astonishing precision. Their brains are now inspiring the design of tiny, low-power chips that could one day guide miniature robots and sensors.

When a bee leaves the nest, it already has its own version of a GPS in its head. By analyzing patterns in the sky and its flying speed, a bee can keep track of its location and safely return home. Researchers are now taking their cue from this in the hope of transforming how computers find their way around.

"A bee finds its way back without a smartphone or satellite navigation," said Anders Mikkelsen, professor at Lund University in Sweden. "They do this by looking at the polarization of the sky, and their speed. Based on that, they don't get lost."

Mikkelsen is part of a group of scientists in an EU initiative named InsectNeuroNano who want to replicate the bee's internal navigation system on a computer chip. Today's chips can already emulate how bees find their way home, but bees do it much more efficiently than computers.

"If you take a lightweight chip, it will easily weigh more than 80 grams and use more than 7 watts of power," said Mikkelsen, who coordinates the initiative. "A bee weighs under one gram and uses less than one hundredth of a watt to power its brain. Imagine if you could make a chip that efficient."

That is exactly what Mikkelsen's team—researchers from universities and labs in five European countries—is setting out to do. They are building an insect-inspired chip that can determine its own position. This chip will be smaller and more efficient than anything currently available for this kind of navigation task.

It could be used in anything from low-cost environmental sensors to insect-like robots that clean up the environment.

"We could make small, insect-sized robots with this," said Mikkelsen. "It would be like having a bee colony, but you get to tell it what to do. You could, for example, use these little bots to clean up pollution, build a structure, or artificially pollinate a field."

Hard-wired navigation...But why is the bee's brain more efficient than a chip? Today's standard chips are versatile and made to perform different tasks. For example, the central processing unit—a computer's "brain"—allows us to send emails, load webpages and edit text documents.

More specialized chips such as graphics cards handle everything from photos of cats to complex video game worlds.

The chip that the InsectNeuroNano team is designing is built to do just one thing. It uses signals from a light sensor attached to the chip, plus speed, to determine its own position.

The chip is highly specialized, much like the bee's brain, which has evolved for efficient navigation rather than versatility. That may seem like a limitation, but it allows the chip to be small and energy-efficient.

"Our chip can only do one task," said Mikkelsen. "But it can do it extremely energy efficiently and in a tiny size. It's a completely different strategy from other computer chips."

From insect brain to chip...The research team's biologists and engineers are working to bring insights from the world of insects into that of computer design. Professor Elisabetta Chicca from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, who specializes in bio-inspired circuits and systems, is one of them.

"For some problems, nature has already found a solution that is compact, low-power and efficient," said Chicca. "Insect brains offer one such solution. We don't know everything about them, but we know enough to start building a system."

Drawing on insights from biologists, Chicca built virtual models of the chips, a task made harder by the fact that insect brains are still not fully understood. "You need to make hypotheses about how they work so you can translate it to the chips," she said.

This kind of research is helpful for biologists as well. By having scientists from other fields fill in the blanks, they learn how insect brains might be working. For example, chip models could suggest how certain circuits in the insect brain might be wired.

"We are learning from biologists," said Chicca. "But the biologists are also learning from us. It's great to see that."

First steps for robot bees...The research is helping to rethink how chips work. Usually, a chip sends electrical signals between its components through wires. That has been the dominant model of computing for decades.

Instead, InsectNeuroNano uses nanophotonic circuits, which guide light through tiny structures on the chip, only billionths of a meter across, in a process called photonic computing.

"You can send more data with light in a more energy-efficient way," said Mikkelsen. "Also, our sensor detects light, so we're using light to sense and to think, which simplifies things. Both of those are quite important if we want a chip the size of an insect brain."

So far, the researchers—whose project runs until September 2026—have managed to create a first prototype chip in lab conditions that mimic insect brain function.

Still, according to Mikkelsen, it will take around 10 years before this technology finds its way into the real world.

Making chips this small, while using new design principles such as nanophotonic computing, is complicated. Still, the team's work has already helped to move the technology forward, and the researchers have learned a lot in the process.

"There are many steps we still have to take before we'll have a robot bee flying around," said Mikkelsen.

"But we have made a huge leap in this project. We went from a theoretical concept to something on a lab table that mimics insect brains."

Their work, although still requiring years of research, has paved the way for insect-sized robots that could one day navigate by reading the sky, just like real bees.

"Now we have to put together a whole system," said Mikkelsen. "We need to scale up everything we learned in the lab. The first steps have been made—now the real progress can begin."

Provided by Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine

TECH

Human-led AI opens tech jobs for refugees

AI can help displaced people avoid exploitation, but humans must call the shots, warn experts. For Susan Achiech, life began in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp, where her South Sudanese parents fled to for safety in the early 1990s. Now 26, she lives in Canada, running her own gaming company, Tech Femme Algorithms, while working as an insurance advisor and studying gaming programming.

Her tech journey began when she sought programming training from the non-profit Learning Lions, while living in Nairobi where she had grown up after leaving Kakuma. She later secured remote coding work through Na'amal, a social enterprise that supports economic inclusion of refugees.

"As a refugee, it's challenging," Achiech tells SciDev.Net. "Most people don't have the education or the skills required for high-end jobs. So training is an issue for migrants."

Na'amal—meaning both "we work" and "we hope" in Arabic—equips refugees and other under-resourced communities with in-demand digital skills, and "essential human skills," for the global labor market, explains CEO Lorraine Charles.

AI training has become central to this work, says Charles. "We know that AI capability now carries a real hiring premium, so we are being deliberate about ensuring everyone who goes through our training develops practical, applied AI skills," she tells SciDev.Net.

The Na'amal Agency, launched in 2024, recruits skilled refugees to work on tech-based projects. The initiative seeks to plug a persistent employment gap in the digital economy, says Charles.

"While digital skills training for refugees has expanded rapidly in recent years, access to formal, paid work has not kept pace," she explains.

"Despite the growth of training programs, skilled refugees remain largely excluded from income-generating opportunities."

The company is developing an AI-supported platform to connect refugee digital talent to paid work. But Charles stresses that human oversight will remain crucial.

"AI will assist with initial matching based on skills [and] project needs, but human oversight ensures quality and ethical checks," she explains.

'Thoughtful' AI use...This balance of AI and human input is also evident at EqualReach, an organization that connects refugees with clients for remote and digital work across the world.

Here, teams of refugee workers are matched with clients, in industries such as IT and design, through a digital platform. The platform uses AI to draft project descriptions, but not to match workers with prospective clients, according to EqualReach founder Giselle Gonzales.

"We are using it thoughtfully, and I think our superpower is our relationship network building approach," she tells SciDev.Net, explaining how the company serves as a facilitator of work relationships between refugee teams and employers.

She notes that people seeking protection often move from their country to one with similar challenges and income levels, creating competition for jobs and tensions between refugees and locals.

"It impacts people economically and further silos those groups," says Gonzales, whose work aims to address some of these challenges.

Na’amal refugee and host community learners, pictured in class in Ethiopia for the Accelerating Digital Livelihoods in Ethiopia program. Credit: Accelerating Digital Livelihoods in Ethiopia

Preventing exploitation...The number of refugees and forcibly displaced people in the world has increased dramatically in the last decade. According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, the number of forcibly displaced people had risen to an estimated 122.6 million by mid-2024, marking an 11.5% increase compared to just the previous year.

Na'amal refugee and host community learners, pictured in class in Ethiopia for the Accelerating Digital Livelihoods in Ethiopia program.

When arriving in a new country, migrants and refugees often face language barriers, administrative issues and discrimination, which can make them vulnerable to exploitation, says Yvonne Giesing, deputy director of the Center for Migration and Development Economics at the University of Munich's Ifo Institute, in Germany.

In the current political climate, where countries are increasingly tightening their immigration rules, she believes it's important not to create false hopes around AI being able to support a migration journey when prospective destination countries are closing their doors.

Avoiding middlemen...Tech platforms that help people sift through options can help people minimize the risk of falling into exploitative situations, says Sabina Dewan, founder and executive director of the JustJobs Network, which has been partnering with Canada's IDRC as part of the FutureWorks Collective research consortium.

Such exploitation is usually orchestrated by middlemen or people smugglers who make false promises to extort money or labor, she explains.

She believes using technology and AI-based systems to look for work can help migrant workers create direct channels with prospective employers, helping them avoid the middlemen.

"However, there's a big other side of it," she cautions.

Workers who get jobs through tech platforms can still find themselves disenfranchised and helpless when issues arise.

For migrants who might not be fully aware of their rights in the new country, "not having effective redressal mechanisms, or relegating redressal mechanisms to an AI platform, can actually be deeply problematic," says Dewan.

Social connections have traditionally been vital tools for most migrants to orient themselves in a new place, figure out practicalities and get help in case of need.

"Those kinds of human support networks are not something that AI can replace," she adds.

Human in the loop...One common hurdle that migrants face when attempting to enter the workforce in a new country is recognition of their qualifications, and AI can safely help with this, says Giesing.

Indima, an Austria-based startup founded in 2023, is attempting to do just this. The company charges a small amount to automatically compare the grading system of a person's school or university with that of the country that they intend to migrate to, according to Emin Vojnikovic, one of the company's co-founders.

Indima's users mostly hail from India, Pakistan and other parts of Asia, as well as Nigeria, he tells SciDev.Net.

The platform uses AI to extract information from transcripts and diplomas, using Optical Character Recognition models and "the secret sauce of extraction," says Vojnikovic, without divulging details.

"We are constantly testing and improving and benchmarking with sets of hundreds of different documents to continuously improve the extraction results," he adds.

Making sure this tool is unbiased is an essential consideration, he stresses: "As we are supporting decisions on somebody's future education or job perspectives, we are working hard to remove bias in data and results… [and] our own bias in, for example, data aggregation and research."

However, like other organizations working in this space, AI is not doing all the work for Indima.

The conversion of credit points from one country's system into another's is not AI-powered, Vojnikovic notes. Instead, Indima uses a big dataset and a deterministic model to make the right credit points conversion.

"We don't solely rely on AI, because AI could be a black box, and if we make a decision about someone's future, we want to be pretty sure about our outcomes," he says.

AI processes aren't explainable to the user, so they shouldn't be left to make decisions about that user, he believes.

"There should always be human oversight, or there should be deterministic solutions which are traceable or explainable to the user," Vojnikovic adds.

Never fully automated...Petro Kosho, the author of a paper on ethical AI use in immigrant workforce development, believes that decisions about people should never be left entirely to AI, because of its inherent bias.

"AI learns from the data you feed it," says Kosho, from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, US.

"When that data doesn't include different types of people, from different backgrounds or different parts of the world, then it is already biased."

At Na'amal, job matching, contracting and project delivery remain subject to human oversight, reducing the risk of bias and exclusion, says Charles.

She adds, "AI does not replace human judgment, automate hiring decisions, or remove accountability. All delivery remains human-led, with oversight, safeguarding, and contextual understanding embedded throughout."

For Dewan of the JustJobs Network, the increasing use of technology to manage recruitment processes for migrant workers, including those coming from low- and middle-income countries, is a good thing. But she stresses: "When it comes to human processes and human development, you cannot take the people out of it."

Provided by SciDev.Net

 

DIGITAL LIFE

Google dismantles network in China that used 9 million Androids for cybercrimes

If you've noticed your smartphone is slow or consuming more data than usual, it might not be your fault. Google has just announced one of the largest cleanup operations in Android history, dismantling a massive network that silently used about nine million devices worldwide as "gateways" to the internet, without their owners suspecting anything.

The operation targeted the China-based company Ipidea, which is accused of operating the world's largest "residential proxy network." In practice, Ipidea transformed millions of cell phones, computers, and smart devices belonging to ordinary people into an infrastructure rented to criminals.

The scheme was simple and insidious. Ipidea convinced developers of free applications (games, utilities, etc.) to include a secret software development kit (SDK) in their applications, paying them for each installation.

When a user installed one of these “free” apps, the SDK turned the device into a proxy. This allowed hackers and cybercriminals to route their internet traffic through the victim's phone.

The result: To the outside world, it appeared that the criminal activity (such as fraud or computer attacks) was being carried out by the innocent phone owner, concealing the true identity of the attackers.

This network was the basis for the creation of the Kimwolf botnet, which last year hijacked millions of devices to launch devastating DDoS attacks, considered the most powerful ever observed.

IPIDEA, one of the world's largest residential proxy networks...John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), highlighted the danger of these networks.

According to him, residential proxies are common tools, used for everything from sophisticated espionage to large-scale criminal schemes.

“By routing traffic through a person's home connection, attackers can hide in plain sight while invading corporate environments.

By taking down IPIDEA's infrastructure, we were able to dismantle a global marketplace that sold access to millions of hijacked consumer devices.”

Google also revealed that, until recently, IPIDEA's infrastructure was used by more than 550 threat groups with varied motivations, such as cybercrime, espionage, advanced persistent operations (APTs), and disinformation campaigns, originating from countries such as China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia.

These activities included access to SaaS environments and local infrastructure, as well as password spray attacks.

A recent study by Synthient showed that malicious actors behind the AISURU/Kimwolf botnet exploited vulnerabilities in residential proxy services, such as IPIDEA, to send commands to vulnerable IoT devices behind firewalls, spreading malware.

This malware, capable of transforming consumer devices into proxy endpoints, is secretly installed in applications and games already pre-installed on Android TV streaming boxes from little-known brands.

In this way, these infected devices begin to relay malicious traffic and participate in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

In addition, IPIDEA launched independent apps, aimed directly at users interested in making "easy money," offering payment for installing the applications and allowing the use of their "idle bandwidth."

Residential proxy networks allow traffic routing through IP addresses provided by internet service providers (ISPs), but they are also ideal for criminals to disguise the origin of malicious actions.

The Google Play Protect cleanup...With a US federal court order in hand, Google took down dozens of back-end systems and websites that controlled the network. In addition, the Google Play Protect security system was updated to automatically identify and remove any app containing Ipidea's malicious code, blocking new installations.

Despite Ipidea claiming that its services were for “legitimate business” use, Google considered the risks unacceptable. This case serves as a stark reminder that "free" on the internet often comes at a hidden cost. The recommendation remains: avoid installing apps from unknown sources and regularly review the permissions and apps you have on your phone.

On January 28, 2026, Google announced it had dismantled a massive, China-based residential proxy network operated by IPIDEA. The operation, supported by a U.S. federal court order, crippled a network that had hijacked approximately 9 million Android devices, along with computers, to facilitate global cybercrime and espionage.

Key details of the operation(below):

The culprit: IPIDEA operated at least 13 residential proxy brands, using software development kits (SDKs) embedded in legitimate-looking apps to turn consumer devices into "exit nodes".

The scale: The botnet comprised over 9 million infected Android devices and other internet-connected, non-Play-certified devices.

The impact: Google’s threat intelligence Group (GTIG) observed over 550 threat groups using IPIDEA’s network in a single week in January 2026 to hide their identities while performing hacking, password-spraying, and other malicious activities.

The action: Google seized dozens of domains, disabled the technical backend, and removed hundreds of associated applications, degrading the network by millions of devices.

How the network operated(below):

IPIDEA’s network acted as a "residential proxy" service, meaning criminals could route their traffic through regular consumers' home Android phones and devices.

Invisible infection: Users likely installed apps that seemed harmless but contained malicious code that turned their device into a proxy relay.

Cybercriminal anonymity: This enabled hackers to make their illegal traffic appear as if it was originating from legitimate residential homes, making it difficult for law enforcement to track them.

Global reach: The compromised devices were used for various malicious actions, including data theft and large-scale, automated attacks.

Broader context: 2025–2026 Android Threats

This action follows a trend of massive, China-linked botnets.

BADBOX 2.0 (July 2025): Google filed lawsuits against 25 Chinese entities for the "BADBOX" botnet, which infected over 10 million Android devices (smart TVs, projectors, tablets) with pre-installed malware.

Lighthouse (Nov 2025): Google sued another group, "Lighthouse," for a phishing-as-a-service platform that targeted over one million victims.

mundophone

 

DIGITAL LIFE

Now under pressure, digital platforms create filters against ‘AI junk’

As “artificial intelligence junk” content spreads across the internet, efforts to contain the flood of images and videos considered low quality are also growing. Productions such as cats painting pictures, celebrities in compromising situations, or cartoon characters promoting products have become ubiquitous with the use of easily accessible AI tools, such as Google's Veo and OpenAI's Sora.

— The advancement of AI has generated questions about low-quality content, also known as AI junk [a term that has become popular in English as “AI slop”] — says Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube.

According to critics, this is material created on a large scale, with little creative effort. This type of content is “cheap, bland and mass-produced,” says Swiss engineer Yves, who preferred not to give his last name, to AFP.

This assessment contrasts with the view of industry leaders. Satya Nadella, head of Microsoft, argues that the debate should be overcome and that technology should be adopted as an instrument to enhance creativity and productivity. The company is among the giants that invest heavily in artificial intelligence.

There are also those who see in the criticism of so-called "AI junk" a broader resistance to the democratization of creative tools.

— At its core, the criticism of AI junk is a criticism of individual creative expression — argues Bob Doyle, a YouTube influencer specializing in AI-generated content.

Stricter measures(below):

Despite the disagreements, digital platforms have begun to react. Pinterest informed AFP that it created a specific filter after receiving recurring requests from users who wanted to see fewer images of this type. TikTok introduced a similar feature at the end of last year.

YouTube, as well as Instagram and Facebook — both belonging to Meta — offer mechanisms to reduce exposure to this content, although they do not have explicit filters aimed solely at AI-generated productions.

Smaller companies are also adopting stricter measures. The music platform Coda Music, which has around 2,500 users, has begun allowing content created by artificial intelligence to be reported or even completely blocked.

"Until now, there has been a lot of participation in identifying AI artists," the company's CEO and founder, Randy Fusee, told AFP.

In the visual arts segment, the social network Cara, aimed at artists and designers and with over one million users, has implemented a combination of algorithms and human moderation to filter out AI-generated content. For its founder, Jingna Zhang, the users' demand is clear: "People want human connection."

The term "AI junk" (often called AI slop in English) refers to content (texts, images, videos) generated en masse by artificial intelligence that lacks effort, quality, or meaning, polluting the digital environment with clickbait and misinformation.

mundophone answers: Which platforms generate the most AI waste?...Based on recent reports (2025-2026), the main platforms where this content proliferates are:

YouTube: Reports indicate that more than 20% of the platform's content can already be considered "AI-generated junk," including fake videos, with synthetic avatars, or automatically generated to generate revenue.

TikTok: the platform generates a significant amount of "digital waste" and has a considerable environmental impact, mainly due to the high energy consumption required to maintain its data centers and the data traffic of short videos...Currently, it is adopting some measures to try to reduce digital waste.

Facebook and Meta (Threads/Instagram): There has been a massive increase in AI-generated posts, with researchers pointing out that the algorithm itself sometimes boosts this content, which includes fake images of political figures and curiosity clicks.

Pinterest: Users report that the visual inspiration platform has been "flooded" with AI-generated images, leading the platform to create tools to "tune" (adjust/reduce) the amount of AI in feeds.

Music Platforms (e.g., Deezer): Streaming services are facing a flood of AI-generated music (tools like Suno and Udio), with reports of over 60,000 automatically uploaded tracks daily, often by fake accounts.

Amazon Kindle and E-books: A notable increase in AI-generated digital books with fictitious authors and low quality, forcing platforms to create publishing limits.

LinkedIn: The network has seen an increase in generic, low-quality posts, automatically produced by content automation tools that scrape websites and generate posts with little "human touch." Main Tools/Sources of AI Slop:

Text and image generators: Copy.ai, Jasper.ai, Writesonic, Midjourney, DALL-E, Canva.

Video/Avatar Tools: Synthesia, InVideo.

Audio/Music Tools: Suno, Udio.

Context of the "War on AI Slop"

In 2026, platforms like YouTube intensified the fight against this material, trying to balance the use of AI for creators with combating low-quality automated content. Meanwhile, new platforms focused on human content (such as Cara and Pixelfed) are emerging as "anti-AI" alternatives.

mundophone

DIGITAL LIFE

In times of AI generating billions in profits for a few and being omnipresent, cell phone-free clubs become an urban refuge in Europe

In-person meetings that require the surrender of smartphones at the entrance propose hours of silence, manual activities, and screen-free conversations as a response to mental exhaustion, hyperconnectivity, and the growing difficulty of being present in the physical world.

Contemporary life is marked by screens, constant notifications, packed schedules, and hurried commutes. In response, groups are forming in major European cities to experience something increasingly rare: in-person meetings without cell phones, where silence, mindfulness, and direct interaction replace, even if only for a few hours, the logic of hyperconnectivity.

Joel Khalili, a journalist for Wired, participated in one of these meetings in London, England, and reported on the experience. “I was greeted at the door by the event host, who was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘The Offline Club.’ I handed over my cell phone, which was stored in a locker specially built for the event — a kind of miniature capsule hotel,” he said.

According to him, the Offline Club started somewhat impromptu in 2021 in the Netherlands. It was organized by Ilya Kneppelhout, Jordy van Bennekon, and Valentijn Klol. After an initial meeting, the trio, considering the experience instructive, began promoting sporadic offline getaways with the goal of fostering informal interaction between strangers.

Officially, the club was founded in February 2024, with events in a café in Amsterdam. Later, it expanded to 19 other cities, mainly in Europe, with each branch run as a franchise by part-time organizers.

“The events generally follow a defined format: an hour of silence, during which people are free to do whatever they want — read, assemble puzzles, color, do crafts, and so on — followed by an hour of conversation without cell phones with the other participants,” explained Khalili.

Laura Wilson, co-host of the London branch of Offline Club, told the journalist that the gatherings are designed as a remedy for the frenetic, noisy, and impersonal pace of city life, where every fraction of time is measured and controlled by alerts and reminders sent by smartphones.

“It’s like a moment of free time, where you have no responsibilities for a while,” she noted. “It’s rekindling that magic of when you were with people for no apparent reason and had no sense of time passing.”

On the night Khalili participated, she met Sangeet Narayan, programmer of the notification system for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, from Meta. He reported that he went to the event hoping to break free from his addiction to those same apps.

“I feel like I’m addicted to my cell phone,” he confessed. “I feel an urgent need to look at my phone—to open it, for no reason at all.”

He added that, during the first hour of the meeting, he found himself resisting the urge to look around to see what other people were doing. “It felt like I was snooping into their private lives,” he pointed out.

Khalili, for his part, admitted that it took him a while to get used to the combination of silence and collective concentration. “Twice, I found myself reaching into my pocket where my phone should be, to check how much time had passed. A flash of panic—I must have lost it somewhere!—gave way to embarrassment at this unwelcome evidence of my own pre-programming. While taking notes or playing with colored pencils, however, I managed to forget about the 40 strangers in the room,” he added.

When it was time to socialize, he started chatting with the people closest to him, talking about the quiet activities they had chosen, the books they were reading, the prospect of raising children in the smartphone age, and the recent ban on social media in Australia.

“The conversation often revolved around a hypocrisy widely shared by the group: the belief that the habit of constantly scrolling invades free time, notifications disturb the peace, and algorithms pollute discourse, combined with a simultaneous reluctance to give up any of these things,” the journalist commented.

And he concluded: “When it was time to leave, I got in line to get my phone…I put on my headphones, selected a song, and opened Google Maps to see the way home.”

The Offline Club is a Dutch movement created by Ilya Kneppelhout, Jordy van Bennekom, and Valentijn Klok that promotes digital detox gatherings. With over 530,000 followers on Instagram, the group organizes events where participants put away their cell phones and laptops, focusing on conversation, reading, and hobbies, aiming to reduce screen addiction and loneliness, expanding to cities like London and Paris.

Main characteristics and proposals:

Mission: To exchange "screen time" for "real time" and restore humanity to society.

Meetings: Include coffee, dinner, and technology-free retreats where people read, paint, play board games, or relax.

Origin and Expansion: Created in Amsterdam (Netherlands) in February 2024, the movement has grown rapidly and now holds meetings in several European cities and also in New York.

Objective: To combat the epidemic of loneliness and the rampant consumption of digital media. The club, despite using Instagram to organize events, strongly encourages physical disconnection, creating the paradox of using technology to promote "offline" activities.

mundophone