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When you apply sunscreen at the beach, it doesnt necessarily stay on your skin. Some of that sunscreen can wash off when you swim, and the chemicals that shield you from ultraviolet rays end up damaging marine life such as coral reefs, sea urchins, and green algae. Each year, an estimated 6,000 to 14,000 metric tons of commercial sunscreen gets into the ocean. Places like Hawaii and Aruba have already banned certain sunscreens. A new sunscreen created by material scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, however, doesnt harm corals. And its not a mineral sunscreen either, which are often thick and can leave a white cast on your skin. Instead of using chemical or mineral filters, it blocks UV waves, thanks to the pollen in camellia flowersand it also keeps your skin cool in the sunlight. The research team was specifically looking at bio-inspired materials as a way to make a more sustainable, safer sunscreen. We were inspired by the natural resilience of pollen grains, which have evolved over millions of years to protect plant genetic material from harsh UV radiation and environmental stress, Nam-Joon Cho, a professor at NTU and the President’s Chair in Materials Science and Engineering, says over email. Though pollen has been studied in cosmetic science before for its antioxidant or nutrient properties, it hasnt, to Cho’s knowledge, been used directly as a UV shield before. Pollen is unique because its structure makes it capable of filtering out harmful UV rays while being visually transparent; its also biodegradable. To turn pollen into sunscreen, the researchers processed the inner parts of the pollen shell into a microgel formula, which applies as an ultra-thin layer on the skin. The pollen-based sunscreen also creates a cooling effect because those microgels block UV light while letting most of the visible and near-infrared light pass through, without absorbing them. Since those wavelengths carry most of the suns heat, less energy gets trapped and converted into warmth on the skin, Cho says. As a result, the skin stays cooler compared to when commercial sunscreens, which absorb more of that heat-carrying light, are used. (Researchers also made a sunscreen from sunflower pollenwhich blocked UV rays but didnt have that cooling effectthough it wasnt as effective in tests.) In lab tests, the camellia pollen-based sunscreen blocked UV radiation at levels comparable with conventional mineral sunscreens, with an SPF of about 30. In lab tests with corals, commercial sunscreen spurred coral bleaching in just two days, with coral death happening in around six days. But the pollen-based sunscreen didnt harm the corals, even up to 60 days. That was crucial for the researchers. Using pollen, which is already a natural component of ecological cycles, allowed us to design with environmental safety in mind, Cho says. The pollen sunscreen may be safer for humans, too. It doesnt include nanoparticles such as titanium dioxide or zinc oxide, which sometimes raise inhalation and safety concerns, Cho says. And even if you suffer from spring allergies, the pollen sunscreen shouldn’t bother you. Camellia pollen is generally considered nonallergenic, and when the pollen is processed, any allergenic proteins are removed. Next, the researchers want to optimize the sunscreen for longer wear and water resistance. They’re also looking at ways to use pollen in all other applications, like drug delivery or food protection. The larger vision, Cho says, is to build a portfolio of bio-inspired, eco-friendly materials that can replace petrochemical-based products in everyday life.
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Despite billions of dollars of AI investment, Googles Gemini has always struggled with image generation. The companys Flash 2.5 model has long felt like a sidenote in comparison to far better generators from the likes of OpenAI, Midjourney, and Ideogram. That all changed last week with the release of Googles new Nano Banana image AI. The wonkily named new system is live for most Gemini users, and its capabilities are insane. To be clear, Nano Banana still sucks at generating new AI images. But it excels at something far more powerful, and potentially sinisterediting existing images to add elements that were never there, in a way thats so seamless and convincing that even experts like myself cant detect the changes. That makes Nano Banana (and its inevitable copycats) both invaluable creative tools and an existential threat to the trustworthiness of photosboth new and historical. In short, with tools like this in the world, you can never trust a photo you see online again. Come fly with me As soon as Google released Nano Banana, I started putting it through its paces. Lots of examples onlinemine includedfocus on cutesy and fun uses of Nano Bananas powerful image-editing capabilities. In my early testing, I placed my dog, Lance, into a Parisian street scene filled with piles of bananas and showed how I would look wearing a Tilley Airflo hat. (Answer: very good.) [Image: Thomas Smith] Immediately, though, I saw the systems potential for generating misinformation. To demonstrate this on a basic level, I tried editing my standard professional headshot to place myself into a variety of scenes around the world. [Image: Thomas Smith] Heres Nano Bananas rendering of me on a beach in Maui. [Image: Thomas Smith] If youve visited Wailea Beach, youll recognize the highly realistic form of the West Maui Mountains in soft focus in the background. I also placed myself atop Mount Everest. My parka looks convincingthe fact that Im still wearing my Travis Matthew polo, less so. [Image: Thomas Smith] 200s a crowd These personal examples are fun. Im sure I could post the Maui beach photo on social media and immediately expect a flurry of comments from friends asking how I enjoyed my trip. But I was after something bigger. I wanted to see how Nano Banana would do at producing misinformation with potential for real-life impact. During last years Presidential elections here in America, accusations of AI fakery flew between both candidates. In an especially infamous example, now-President Donald Trump accused Kamala Harriss campaign of using AI to fake the size of a crowd during a campaign rally. All reputable accounts of the event support the fact that photos of the Harris rally were real. But I wondered if Nano Banana could create a fake visual of a much smaller crowd, using the real rally photo as input. Heres the result: [Image: Thomas Smith] The edited version looks extremely realistic, in part because it keeps specific details from the actual photo, like the people in the foreground holding Harris-Walz signs and phones. But the fake image gives the appearance that only around 200 people attended the event and were densely concentrated in a small space far from the plane, just as Trumps campaign claimed. If Nano Banana had existed at the time of the controversy, I could easily see an AI-doctored photo like this circulating on social media, as proof that the original crowd was smaller than Harris claimed. Before, creating a carefully altered version of a real image with tools like Photoshop would have taken a skilled editor daystoo long for the result to have much chance of making it into the news cycle and altering narratives. Now, with powerful AI editors, a bad actor wishing to spread misinformation could convincingly alter photos in seconds, with no budget or editing skills needed. Fly me to the moon Having tested an example from the present day, I decided to turn my attention to a historical event that has yielded countless conspiracy theories: the 1969 moon landing. Conspiracists often claim that the moon landing was staged in a studio. Again, theres no actual evidence to support this. But I wondered if tools like Nano Banana could fake some. To find out, I handed Nano Banana a real NASA photo of astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon. [Image: NASA] I then asked it to pretend the photo had been faked, and to show it being created in a period-appropriate photo studio. [Image: NASA/Thomas Smith] The resulting image is impressive in its imagined detail. A group of men (it was NASA in the 1960sof course theyre all men!) in period-accurate clothing stand around a soundstage with a fake sky backdrop, fake lunar regolith on the floor, and a prop moon lander. In the center of the regolith stands an actor in a space suit, his stance perfectly matching Aldrins slight forward lean in the actual photo. Various flats and other theatrical equipment are unceremoniously stacked to the sides of the room. As a real-life professional photographer, I can vouch for the fact that the technical details in the Nano Bananas image are spot-on. A giant key light above the astronaut actor stands in for the bright, atmosphere-free lighting of the lunar surface, while various lighting instruments provide shadows perfectly matching the lunar lander shadow in the real image. A photographer crouches on the floor, capturing the imagined astronaut actor from an angle that would indeed match the angle in the real-life photograph. Even the unique lighting on the slightly crumpled American flagwith a small circular shadow in the middle of the flagmatches the real image. In short, if you were going to fake the moon landing, Nano Bananas imagined soundstage would be a pretty reasonable photographic setup to use. If you posted this AI photo on social media with a caption like REVEALED! Deep in NASAs archive, we found a photo that PROVES the moon landing was staged. The Federal Government doesnt want you to see this COVER UP, Im certain that a critical mass of people would believe it. But why stop there? After using Nano Banana to fake the moon landing, I figured Id go even further back in history. I gave the system the Wright Brothers iconic 1903 photo of their first flight at Kitty Hawk, and asked the system to imagine that it, too, had been staged. [Image: John T. Daniels] Sure enough, Nano Banana added a period-accurate wheeled stand to the plane. [Image: John T. Daniels/Thomas Smith] Presumably, the plane could have been photographed on this wheeled stand, which could then be masked out in the darkroom to yield the iconic image weve all seen reprinted in textbooks for the last century. Believe nothing In many ways, Nano Banana is nothing new. People have been doctoring photos for almost as long as theyve been taking them. An iconic photo of Abraham Lincoln from 1860 is actually a composite of Lincolns head and the politician John Calhouns much more swole body, and other examples of historical photographic manipulation abound. Still, the ease and speed with which Nano Banana can alter photos is new. Before, creating a convincing fake took skill and time. Now, it takes a cleverly written prompt and a few seconds. To their credit, Google is well aware of these risks, and is taking important steps to defend against them. Each image created by Nano Banana comes with an (easy to remove) physical watermark in the lower right corner, as well as a (harder to remove) SynthID digital watermark invisibly embedded directly into the images pixels. This digital watermark travels with the image, and can be read with special software. If a fake Nano Banana image started making the rounds online, Google could presumably scan for its embedded SynthID and quickly confirm that it was a fake. They could likely even trace its provenance to the Gemini user that created it. Google scientists have told me that the SynthID can survive common tactics that people use to obscure the origin of an image. Cropping a photo, or even taking a screenshot of it, wont remove the embedded SynthID. Google also has a robust and nuanced set of policies governing the use of Nano Banana. Creating fake images with the intent to deceive people would likely get a user banned, while creating them for artistic or research purposes, as Ive done for this article, is generally allowed. Still, once a groundbreaking new AI technology rolls out from one provider, others quickly copy it. Not all image generation companies will be as careful about provenance and security as Google. The (rhinestone-studded, occasionally surfing) cat is out of the bag; now that tools like Nano Banana exist, we need to assume that every image we see online could have been created with one. Nano Banana and its ilk are so good that even photographic experts like myself wont be able to reliably spot its fakes. As users, we therefore need to be consistently skeptical of visuals. Instead of trusting our eyes as we browse the Internet, our only recourse is to turn to reputation, provenance, and good old-fashioned media literacy to protect ourselves from fakes. Now, if youll excuse me, Burning Man is just ending, and I should really get back to the festivities. [Image: Thomas Smith]
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Youve probably encountered images in your social media feeds that look like a cross between photographs and computer-generated graphics. Some are fantasticalthink Shrimp Jesusand some are believable at a quick glanceremember the little girl clutching a puppy in a boat during a flood? These are examples of AI slop, or low- to mid-quality contentvideo, images, audio, text or a mixcreated with AI tools, often with little regard for accuracy. Its fast, easy, and inexpensive to make this content. AI slop producers typically place it on social media to exploit the economics of attention on the internet, displacing higher-quality material that could be more helpful. AI slop has been increasing over the past few years. As the term slop indicates, thats generally not good for people using the internet. AI slops many forms The Guardian published an analysis in July 2025 examining how AI slop is taking over YouTubes fastest-growing channels. The journalists found that 9 out of the top 100 fastest-growing channels feature AI-generated content like zombie football and cat soap operas. The song “Let it Burn,” allegedly recorded by a band called The Velvet Sundown, was AI-generated. Listening to Spotify? Be skeptical of that new band, The Velvet Sundown, that appeared on the streaming service with a creative backstory and derivative tracks. Its AI-generated. In many cases, people submit AI slop thats just good enough to attract and keep users attention, allowing the submitter to profit from platforms that monetize streaming and view-based content. The ease of generating content with AI enables people to submit low-quality articles to publications. Clarkesworld, an online science fiction magazine that accepts user submissions and pays contributors, stopped taking new submissions in 2024 because of the flood of AI-generated writing it was getting. These arent the only places where this happenseven Wikipedia is dealing with AI-generated low-quality content that strains its entire community moderation system. If the organization is not successful in removing it, a key information resource people depend on is at risk. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver delves into AI slop. Harms of AI slop AI-driven slop is making its way upstream into peoples media diets as well. During Hurricane Helene, opponents of President Joe Biden cited AI-generated images of a displaced child clutching a puppy as evidence of the administrations purported mishandling of the disaster response. Even when its apparent that content is AI-generated, it can still be used to spread misinformation by fooling some people who briefly glance at it. AI slop also harms artists by causing job and financial losses and crowding out content made by real creators. The placement of this lower-quality AI-generated content is often not distinguished by the algorithms that drive social media consumption, and it displaces entire classes of creators who previously made their livelihood from online content. Wherever its enabled, you can flag content thats harmful or problematic. On some platforms, you can add community notes to the content to provide context. For harmful content, you can try to report it. Along with forcing us to be on guard for deepfakes and inauthentic social media accounts, AI is now leading to piles of dreck degrading our media environment. At least theres a catchy name for it. Adam Nemeroff is an assistant provost for innovations in learning, teaching, and technology at Quinnipiac University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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