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Is that wildfire smoke plume hazardous? New satellite tech can map smoke plumes in 3D for better air quality alerts at neighborhood scale

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jun Wang, Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Iowa

Smoke from Canadian wildfires prompted air quality alerts in Chicago as it blanketed the city on June 5, 2025. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Canada is facing another dangerous wildfire season, with burning forests sending smoke plumes across the provinces and into the U.S. again. The pace of the 2025 fires is reminiscent of the record-breaking 2023 wildfire season, which exposed millions of people in North America to hazardous smoke levels.

For most of the past decade, forecasters have been able to use satellites to track these smoke plumes, but the view was only two-dimensional: The satellites couldn’t determine how close the smoke was to Earth’s surface.

The altitude of the smoke matters.

If a plume is high in the atmosphere, it won’t affect the air people breathe – it simply floats by, far overhead.

But when smoke plumes are close to the surface, people are breathing in wildfire chemicals and tiny particles. Those particles, known as PM2.5, can get deep into the lungs and exacerbate asthma and other respiratory and cardiac problems.

An animation shows mostly green (safe) air quality from ground-level monitors. However, in Canada, closer to the fire, the same plume shows high levels of PM2.5.
An animation on May 30, 2025, shows a thick smoke plume from Canada moving over Minnesota, but the air quality monitors on the ground detected minimal risk, suggesting it was a high-level smoke plume.
NOAA NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research

The Environmental Protection Agency uses a network of ground-based air quality monitors to issue air quality alerts, but the monitors are few and far between, meaning forecasts have been broad estimates in much of the country.

Now, a new satellite-based method that I and colleagues at universities and federal agencies have been working on for the past two years is able to give scientists and air quality managers a 3D picture of the smoke plumes, providing detailed data of the risks down to the neighborhood level for urban and rural areas alike.

Building a nationwide smoke monitoring system

The new method uses data from a satellite that NASA launched in 2023 called the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, or TEMPO, satellite.

A map shows blue over the Dakotas, Nebraska and western parts of Minnesota and Iowa. Pink is over Pennsylvania up through Maine.
Data from the TEMPO satellite shows the height of the smoke plume, measured in kilometers. Light blue areas are closest to the ground, suggesting the worst air quality. Pink areas suggest the smoke is more than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) above the ground, where it poses little risk to human health. The data aligns with air monitor readings taken on the ground at the same time.
NOAA NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research

TEMPO makes it possible to determine a smoke plume’s height by providing data on how much the oxygen molecules absorb sunlight at the 688 nanometer wavelength. Smoke plumes that are high in the atmosphere reflect more solar radiation at this wavelength back to space, while those lower in the atmosphere, where there is more oxygen to absorb the light, reflect less.

Understanding the physics allowed scientists to develop algorithms that use TEMPO’s data to infer the smoke plume’s altitude and map its 3D movement in nearly real time.

An illustration shows a satellite, Sun and smoke plume at different heights. Higher plumes reflect more light.
Aerosol particles in high smoke plumes reflect more light back into space. Closer to Earth’s surface, there is more oxygen to absorb light at the 688 nanometer wavelength, so less light is reflected. Satellites can detect the difference, and that can be used to determine the height of the smoke plume.
Adapted from Xu et al, 2019, CC BY

By combining TEMPO’s data with measurements of particles in the atmosphere, taken by the Advanced Baseline Imager on the NOAA’s GOES-R satellites, forecasters can better assess the health risk from smoke plumes in almost real time, provided clouds aren’t in the way.

That’s a big jump from relying on ground-based air quality monitors, which may be hundreds of miles apart. Iowa, for example, had about 50 air quality monitors reporting data on a recent day for a state that covers 56,273 square miles. Most of those monitors were clustered around its largest cities.

NOAA’s AerosolWatch tool currently provides a near-real-time stream of wildfire smoke images from its GOES-R satellites, and the agency plans to incorporate TEMPO’s height data. A prototype of this system from my team’s NASA-supported research project on fire and air quality, called FireAQ, shows how users can zoom in to the neighborhood level to see how high the smoke plume is, however the prototype is currently only updated once a day, so the data is delayed, and it isn’t able to provide smoke height data where clouds are also overhead.

Wildfire health risks are rising

Fire risk is increasing across North America as global temperatures rise and more people move into wildland areas.

While air quality in most of the U.S. improved between 2000 and 2020, thanks to stricter emissions regulations on vehicles and power plants, wildfires have reversed that trend in parts of the western U.S. Research has found that wildfire smoke has effectively erased nearly two decades of air quality progress there.

Our advances in smoke monitoring mark a new era in air quality forecasting, offering more accurate and timely information to better protect public health in the face of these escalating wildfire threats.

The Conversation

Prof. Wang’s group have been supported from NOAA, NASA, and Naval ONR to develop research algorithm to retrieve aerosol layer height. The compute codes of the research algorithm were shared with colleagues in NOAA.

– ref. Is that wildfire smoke plume hazardous? New satellite tech can map smoke plumes in 3D for better air quality alerts at neighborhood scale – https://theconversation.com/is-that-wildfire-smoke-plume-hazardous-new-satellite-tech-can-map-smoke-plumes-in-3d-for-better-air-quality-alerts-at-neighborhood-scale-259654

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Is that wildfire smoke plume hazardous? New satellite tech can map smoke height for better air quality alerts at neighborhood scale

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jun Wang, Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Iowa

Smoke from Canadian wildfires prompted air quality alerts in Chicago as it blanketed the city on June 5, 2025. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Canada is facing another dangerous wildfire season, with burning forests sending smoke plumes across the provinces and into the U.S. again. The pace of the 2025 fires is reminiscent of the record-breaking 2023 wildfire season, which exposed millions of people in North America to hazardous smoke levels.

For most of the past decade, forecasters have been able to use satellites to track these smoke plumes, but the view was only two-dimensional: The satellites couldn’t determine how close the smoke was to Earth’s surface.

The altitude of the smoke matters.

If a plume is high in the atmosphere, it won’t affect the air people breathe – it simply floats by, far overhead.

But when smoke plumes are close to the surface, people are breathing in wildfire chemicals and tiny particles. Those particles, known as PM2.5, can get deep into the lungs and exacerbate asthma and other respiratory and cardiac problems.

An animation shows mostly green (safe) air quality from ground-level monitors. However, in Canada, closer to the fire, the same plume shows high levels of PM2.5.
An animation on May 30, 2025, shows a thick smoke plume from Canada moving over Minnesota, but the air quality monitors on the ground detected minimal risk, suggesting it was a high-level smoke plume.
NOAA NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research

The Environmental Protection Agency uses a network of ground-based air quality monitors to issue air quality alerts, but the monitors are few and far between, meaning forecasts have been broad estimates in much of the country.

Now, a new satellite-based method that I and colleagues at universities and federal agencies have been working on for the past two years is able to give scientists and air quality managers a 3D picture of the smoke plumes, providing detailed data of the risks down to the neighborhood level for urban and rural areas alike.

Building a nationwide smoke monitoring system

The new method uses data from a satellite that NASA launched in 2023 called the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, or TEMPO, satellite.

A map shows blue over the Dakotas, Nebraska and western parts of Minnesota and Iowa. Pink is over Pennsylvania up through Maine.
Data from the TEMPO satellite shows the height of the smoke plume, measured in kilometers. Light blue areas are closest to the ground, suggesting the worst air quality. Pink areas suggest the smoke is more than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) above the ground, where it poses little risk to human health. The data aligns with air monitor readings taken on the ground at the same time.
NOAA NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research

TEMPO makes it possible to determine a smoke plume’s height by providing data on how much the oxygen molecules absorb sunlight at the 688 nanometer wavelength. Smoke plumes that are high in the atmosphere reflect more solar radiation at this wavelength back to space, while those lower in the atmosphere, where there is more oxygen to absorb the light, reflect less.

Understanding the physics allowed scientists to develop algorithms that use TEMPO’s data to infer the smoke plume’s altitude and map its 3D movement in nearly real time.

An illustration shows a satellite, Sun and smoke plume at different heights. Higher plumes reflect more light.
Aerosol particles in high smoke plumes reflect more light back into space. Closer to Earth’s surface, there is more oxygen to absorb light at the 688 nanometer wavelength, so less light is reflected. Satellites can detect the difference, and that can be used to determine the height of the smoke plume.
Adapted from Xu et al, 2019, CC BY

By combining TEMPO’s data with measurements of particles in the atmosphere, taken by the Advanced Baseline Imager on the NOAA’s GOES-R satellites, forecasters can better assess the health risk from smoke plumes in almost real time, provided clouds aren’t in the way.

That’s a big jump from relying on ground-based air quality monitors, which may be hundreds of miles apart. Iowa, for example, had about 50 air quality monitors reporting data on a recent day for a state that covers 56,273 square miles. Most of those monitors were clustered around its largest cities.

NOAA’s AerosolWatch tool currently provides a near-real-time stream of wildfire smoke images from its GOES-R satellites, and the agency plans to incorporate TEMPO’s height data. A prototype of this system from my team’s NASA-supported research project on fire and air quality, called FireAQ, shows how users can zoom in to the neighborhood level to see how high the smoke plume is, however the prototype is currently only updated once a day, so the data is delayed, and it isn’t able to provide smoke height data where clouds are also overhead.

Wildfire health risks are rising

Fire risk is increasing across North America as global temperatures rise and more people move into wildland areas.

While air quality in most of the U.S. improved between 2000 and 2020, thanks to stricter emissions regulations on vehicles and power plants, wildfires have reversed that trend in parts of the western U.S. Research has found that wildfire smoke has effectively erased nearly two decades of air quality progress there.

Our advances in smoke monitoring mark a new era in air quality forecasting, offering more accurate and timely information to better protect public health in the face of these escalating wildfire threats.

The Conversation

Prof. Wang’s group have been supported from NOAA, NASA, and Naval ONR to develop research algorithm to retrieve aerosol layer height. The compute codes of the research algorithm were shared with colleagues in NOAA.

– ref. Is that wildfire smoke plume hazardous? New satellite tech can map smoke height for better air quality alerts at neighborhood scale – https://theconversation.com/is-that-wildfire-smoke-plume-hazardous-new-satellite-tech-can-map-smoke-height-for-better-air-quality-alerts-at-neighborhood-scale-259654

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Yazidi genocide victims offered glimmer of hope for justice – but challenges remain

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Busra Nisa Sarac, Senior Lecturer in International Security and Gender Studies, University of Portsmouth

A French national called Sonia Mejri will stand trial for her alleged involvement in crimes committed against the Yazidi community, a Paris court ruled in early July. Mejri is accused of having joined the Islamic State (IS) group’s so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and participating in its genocidal campaign against the Yazidi religious minority group 11 years ago.

At that time, IS overran the Sinjar region of northern Iraq and carried out atrocities against the civilian population. The Yazidi people were subjected to murder, rape, enslavement and forced conversion to Islam. Approximately 12,000 Yazidis were killed or abducted by IS, and around 250,000 fled to Mount Sinjar where they faced near starvation.

The Paris court’s ruling follows the prosecution of several other people across Europe in recent years for their role in enslaving Yazidis. These developments have offered the Yazidi community a glimmer of hope for justice.

In 2021, for example, a former member of IS called Taha al-Jumailly was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. A court in Frankfurt, Germany, ruled that he intended to eliminate the Yazidis by purchasing two women and enslaving them. This was the world’s first trial concerning the Yazidi genocide.

More recently, in 2024, a Dutch woman known as Hasna Aarab stood trial in The Hague, Netherlands, for charges also related to the enslavement of Yazidi women. She was sentenced to ten years in prison. Then, in February 2025, a Swedish woman called Lina Ishaq was convicted of committing genocide, crimes against humanity and gross war crimes against Yazidis in Syria.

Despite the fact that the international community has been slow in prosecuting members of IS for their roles in the genocide, these cases are a positive development. But it should also be noted that they are the result of years of advocacy and campaigning by Yazidi organisations and activists.

The Free Yezidi Foundation and Nadia’s Initiative are just two examples of organisations that have been fighting for justice and reparation since 2014.

Notwithstanding these developments, and the fact that IS lost control of its territory in Iraq and Syria in 2017, there are still significant challenges facing the Yazidi community. One pressing concern is the whereabouts of the more than 2,000 Yazidis who are still missing.

A few Yazidi women have emerged from different locations in recent years, which has made families hopeful. But the missing elderly women are now presumed dead and many others are believed to have been killed by airstrikes in the international military campaign against IS. These people are thought to be buried in mass graves.

Another concern is linked to the detention camps in northeast Syria, where suspected members of IS are detained indefinitely. A 2024 report by Amnesty International indicated that hundreds of Yazidis are probably being held in the camps.

This can be explained by two factors. First, Yazidi women in these camps may avoid identification due to fears of being separated from their children born in IS slavery. Yazidi leaders have declared that children born to IS members are not welcome and could never be assimilated into Yazidi society.

Second, it’s possible that some Yazidis in the camps no longer know their identity due to prolonged captivity and exposure to radical views from IS members. Both factors may prevent many Yazidis from returning to their communities, compounding the long-term consequences of the genocide.

The Al-Hol detention camp in north-eastern Syria.
The Al-Hol detention camp in north-eastern Syria, where many people with ties to IS are held.
Trent Inness / Shutterstock

Persistent security challenges

The Yazidis also continue to face persistent security challenges, as they lack the necessary infrastructure and support to rebuild their home towns. More than a decade on, 200,000 Yazidis remain displaced, with the majority living in makeshift camps. These camps are mainly located in Duhok, a city in the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The Kurdistan regional government has been actively working to close down or merge the displacement camps in an attempt to encourage the displaced families to return home. But a lack of infrastructure, including access to water, and limited employment opportunities continue to hinder their return and resettlement.

Iraq’s federal government has said it will give 4 million Iraqi dinars (roughly £2,250) to each Yazidi family that returns home, as well as offering interest-free bank loans. But the compensation scheme has now been paused due to a lack of funds. Even when it was offered, the amount was not enough to help people rebuild their lives in places that are in ruins.

The presence of various armed groups supported by different states in the region also threatens the safety and security of the Yazidis. Sinjar’s rugged terrain and remoteness from political centres has long encouraged groups, including the Kurdish Workers’ Party and Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, to establish transit routes there to support their allies in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Turkey.



Read more:
How does the PKK’s disarmament affect Turkey, Syria and Iraq?

Sinjar is also a disputed territory, claimed by the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government in Erbil. Clashes between local militia groups continue to destabilise Sinjar, leading to the re-displacement of some Yazidis who have only recently returned, while preventing many others from returning even if they wanted to do.

The trials of IS members have given Yazidis some hope for justice. But persistent problems since 2014 have made it hard for them to return to their hometowns, or feel safe if they do so. Until these things are dealt with properly, the same problems will continue in the years to come.

The Conversation

Busra Nisa Sarac does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Yazidi genocide victims offered glimmer of hope for justice – but challenges remain – https://theconversation.com/yazidi-genocide-victims-offered-glimmer-of-hope-for-justice-but-challenges-remain-261612

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‘Fibremaxxing’ is trending – here’s why that could be a problem

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lewis Mattin, Senior Lecturer, Life Sciences, University of Westminster

Soluble fibre. Towfiqu ahamed barbhuiya/Shutterstock.com

You need fibre. That much is true. But in the world of online health trends, what started out as sound dietary advice has spiralled into “fibremaxxing” – a push to consume eye-watering amounts in the name of wellness.

In the UK, NHS guidelines suggest that an adult should consume at least 30g of fibre a day. Children and teens typically need much less.

Yet despite clear guidelines, most Britons fall short of their daily fibre target. One major culprit? The rise of ultra-processed foods, or UPFs. UK adults now get over 54% of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods. For teenagers, it’s nearer 66%.

This matters because UPFs are typically low in fibre and micronutrients, while being high in sugar, salt and unhealthy fats. When these foods dominate our plate, naturally fibre-rich whole foods get pushed out.

Studies show that as ultra-processed food intake increases, fibre consumption decreases, along with other essential nutrients. The result is a population falling well short of its daily fibre target.

Dietary fibre is essential for good health as part of a balanced diet. And it is best found in natural plant-based foods.

Adding high fibre foods to your meals and snacks throughout a typical day, such as switching to wholegrain bread for breakfast, keeping the skin on fruits like an apple, adding lentils and onions to a chilli evening meal and eating a handful of pumpkin seeds or Brazil nuts between meals, would help an average person hit their 30g-a-day dietary requirements.

Displacement

With fibremaxxing, what might make this trend somewhat dangerous is the removal of other food groups such as proteins, carbohydrates and fats and replacing them with fibre-dense foods, supplements or powder. This is where the potential risk could mitigate the benefits of increasing fibre, as no robust studies in humans – as far as I’m aware – have been conducted on long-term fibre intakes over 40g a day. (Some advocates of fibremaxxing suggest consuming between 50 and 100g a day.)

Eating too much fibre too quickly – especially without enough water – can lead to bloating, cramping and constipation. It can also cause a buildup of gas that can escape at the most inconvenient moments, like during a daily commute.

Commuters looking suspiciously at someone off-camera.
Someone’s been fibremaxxing.
William Perugini/Shutterstock.com

Rapidly increasing fibre intake or consuming too much can interfere with the absorption of essential micronutrients like iron, which supports normal body function, as well as macronutrients, which provide the energy needed for movement, repair and adaptation.

However, it’s important to remember that increasing fibre in your diet offers a wide range of health benefits. It supports a healthy digestive system by promoting regular bowel movements and reducing the occurrence of inflammatory bowel disease.

Soluble fibre helps to regulate blood sugar levels by slowing the absorption of glucose, making it especially helpful for people at risk of type 2 diabetes. It also lowers LDL (bad) cholesterol, reducing the risk of heart disease. Fibre keeps you feeling full for longer, which supports healthy weight management and appetite regulation. These findings are all well documented.

Additionally, a high-fibre diet has been linked to a lower risk of certain cancers, particularly colon cancer, by helping to remove toxins efficiently from the body. Gradually increasing fibre intake to recommended levels – through a balanced, varied diet – can offer real health benefits.

Given the evidence, it’s clear that many of us could benefit from eating more fibre – but within reason.

Until we know more, it’s safest to stick to fibre intake within current guidelines, and get it from natural sources rather than powders or supplements. Fibre is vital, but more isn’t always better. Skip the social media fads and aim for balance: whole grains, veg, nuts and seeds. Your gut – and your fellow commuters – will thank you.

The Conversation

Lewis Mattin is affiliated with The Physiological Society, The Society for Endocrinology, In2Science & UKRI funded Ageing and Nutrient Sensing Network.

– ref. ‘Fibremaxxing’ is trending – here’s why that could be a problem – https://theconversation.com/fibremaxxing-is-trending-heres-why-that-could-be-a-problem-261280

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Netflix is now using generative AI – but it risks leaving viewers and creatives behind

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Edward White, PhD Candidate in Psychology, Kingston University

Netflix’s recent use of generative AI to create a building collapse scene in the sci-fi show El Eternauta (The Eternaut) marks more than a technological milestone. It reveals a fundamental psychological tension about what makes entertainment authentic.

The sequence represents the streaming giant’s first official deployment of text-to-video AI in final footage. According to Netflix, it was completed ten times faster than traditional methods would have allowed.

Yet this efficiency gain illuminates a deeper question rooted in human psychology. When viewers discover their entertainment contains AI, does this revelation of algorithmic authorship trigger the same cognitive dissonance we experience when discovering we’ve been seduced by misinformation?

The shift from traditional CGI (computer-generated imagery) to generative AI is the most significant change in visual effects (VFX) since computer graphics displaced physical effects.

Traditional physical VFX requires legions of artists meticulously crafting mesh-based models, spending weeks perfecting each element’s geometry, lighting and animation. Even the use of CGI with green screens demands human artists to construct every digital element from 3D models and programme the simulations. They have to manually key-frame each moment, setting points to show how things move or change.

Netflix’s generative AI approach marks a fundamental shift. Instead of building digital scenes piece by piece, artists simply describe what they want and algorithms generate full sequences instantly. This turns a slow, laborious craft into something more like a creative conversation. But it also raises tough questions. Are we seeing a new stage of technology – or the replacement of human creativity with algorithmic guesswork?

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El Eternauta’s building collapse scene demonstrates this transformation starkly. What would once have demanded months of modelling, rigging and simulation work has been accomplished through text-to-video generation in a fraction of the time.

The economics driving this transformation extend far beyond Netflix’s creative ambitions.

The text-to-video AI market is projected to be worth £1.33 billion by 2029. This reflects an industry looking to cut corners after the streaming budget cuts of 2022. In that year, Netflix’s content spending declined 4.6%, while Disney and other major studios implemented widespread cost-cutting measures.

AI’s cost disruption is bewildering. Traditional VFX sequences can cost thousands per minute. As a result, the average CGI and VFX budget for US films reached US$33.7 million (£25 million) per movie in 2018. Generative AI could lead to cost reductions of 10% across the media industry, and as much as 30% in TV and film. This will enable previously impossible creative visions to be realised by independent filmmakers – but this increased accessibility comes with losses too.

The trailer for El Eternauta.

The OECD reports that 27% of jobs worldwide are at “high risk of automation” due to AI. Meanwhile, surveys by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees have revealed that 70% of VFX workers do unpaid overtime, and only 12% have health insurance. Clearly, the industry is already under pressure.

Power versus precision

While AI grants filmmakers unprecedented access to complex imagery, it simultaneously strips away the granular control that defines directorial vision.

As an experiment, film director Ascanio Malgarini spent a year creating an AI-generated short film called Kraken (2025). He used AI tools like MidJourney, Kling, Runway and Sora, but found that “full control over every detail” was “simply out of the question”.

Malgarini described working more like a documentary editor. He assembled “vast amounts of footage from different sources” rather than directing precise shots.

Kraken, the experimental AI short film by Ascanio Malgarini.

And it’s not just filmmakers who prefer the human touch. In the art world, studies have shown that viewers strongly prefer original artworks to pixel-perfect AI copies. Participants cited sensitivity to the creative process as fundamental to appreciation.

When applied to AI-generated content, this bias creates fascinating contradictions. Recent research in Frontiers in Psychology found that when participants didn’t know the origin, they significantly preferred AI-generated artwork to human-made ones. However, once AI authorship was revealed, the same content suffered reduced perceptions of authenticity and creativity.

Hollywood’s AI reckoning

Developments in AI are happening amid a regulatory vacuum. While the US Congress held multiple AI hearings in 2023, no comprehensive federal AI legislation exists to govern Hollywood’s use. The stalled US Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act leaves creators without legal protections, as companies deploy AI systems trained on potentially copyrighted materials.

The UK faces similar challenges, with the government launching a consultation in December 2024 on copyright and AI reform. This included a proposal for an “opt-out” system, meaning creators could actively prevent their work from being used in AI training.

The 2023 Hollywood strikes crystallised industry fears about AI displacement. Screenwriters secured protections ensuring AI cannot write or rewrite material, while actors negotiated consent requirements for digital replicas. Yet these agreements primarily cover the directors, producers and lead actors who have the most negotiating power, while VFX workers remain vulnerable.

Copyright litigation is now beginning to dominate the AI landscape – over 30 infringement lawsuits have been filed against AI companies since 2020. Disney and Universal’s landmark June 2025 lawsuit against Midjourney represents the first major studio copyright challenge, alleging the AI firm created a “bottomless pit of plagiarism” by training on copyrighted characters without permission.

Meanwhile, federal courts in the US have delivered mixed rulings. A Delaware judge found against AI company Ross Intelligence for training on copyrighted legal content, while others have partially sided with fair use defences.

The industry faces an acceleration problem – AI advancement outpaces contract negotiations and psychological adaptation. AI is reshaping industry demands, yet 96% of VFX artists report receiving no AI training, with 31% citing this as a barrier to incorporating AI in their work.

Netflix’s AI integration shows that Hollywood is grappling with fundamental questions about creativity, authenticity and human value in entertainment. Without comprehensive AI regulation and retraining programs, the industry risks a future where technological capability advances faster than legal frameworks, worker adaptation and public acceptance can accommodate.

As audiences begin recognising AI’s invisible hand in their entertainment, the industry must navigate not just economic disruption, but the cognitive biases that shape how we perceive and value creative work.

The Conversation

Edward White is affiliated with Kingston University.

– ref. Netflix is now using generative AI – but it risks leaving viewers and creatives behind – https://theconversation.com/netflix-is-now-using-generative-ai-but-it-risks-leaving-viewers-and-creatives-behind-261699

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AI agents are here. Here’s what to know about what they can do – and how they can go wrong

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Daswin de Silva, Professor of AI and Analytics, Director of AI Strategy, La Trobe University

George Peters / Getty Images

We are entering the third phase of generative AI. First came the chatbots, followed by the assistants. Now we are beginning to see agents: systems that aspire to greater autonomy and can work in “teams” or use tools to accomplish complex tasks.

The latest hot product is OpenAI’s ChatGPT agent. This combines two pre-existing products (Operator and Deep Research) into a single more powerful system which, according to the developer, “thinks and acts”.

These new systems represent a step up from earlier AI tools. Knowing how they work and what they can do – as well as their drawbacks and risks – is rapidly becoming essential.

From chatbots to agents

ChatGPT launched the chatbot era in November 2022, but despite its huge popularity the conversational interface limited what could be done with the technology.

Enter the AI assistant, or copilot. These are systems built on top of the same large language models that power generative AI chatbots, only now designed to carry out tasks with human instruction and supervision.

Agents are another step up. They are intended to pursue goals (rather than just complete tasks) with varying degrees of autonomy, supported by more advanced capabilities such as reasoning and memory.

Multiple AI agent systems may be able to work together, communicating with each other to plan, schedule, decide and coordinate to solve complex problems.

Agents are also “tool users” as they can also call on software tools for specialised tasks – things such as web browsers, spreadsheets, payment systems and more.

A year of rapid development

Agentic AI has felt imminent since late last year. A big moment came last October, when Anthropic gave its Claude chatbot the ability to interact with a computer in much the same way a human does. This system could search multiple data sources, find relevant information and submit online forms.

Other AI developers were quick to follow. OpenAI released a web browsing agent named Operator, Microsoft announced Copilot agents, and we saw the launch of Google’s Vertex AI and Meta’s Llama agents.

Earlier this year, the Chinese startup Monica demonstrated its Manus AI agent buying real estate and converting lecture recordings into summary notes. Another Chinese startup, Genspark, released a search engine agent that returns a single-page overview (similar to what Google does now) with embedded links to online tasks such as finding the best shopping deals. Another startup, Cluely, offers a somewhat unhinged “cheat at anything” agent that has gained attention but is yet to deliver meaningful results.

Not all agents are made for general-purpose activity. Some are specialised for particular areas.

Coding and software engineering are at the vanguard here, with Microsoft’s Copilot coding agent and OpenAI’s Codex among the frontrunners. These agents can independently write, evaluate and commit code, while also assessing human-written code for errors and performance lags.

Search, summarisation and more

One core strength of generative AI models is search and summarisation. Agents can use this to carry out research tasks that might take a human expert days to complete.

OpenAI’s Deep Research tackles complex tasks using multi-step online research. Google’s AI “co-scientist” is a more sophisticated multi-agent system that aims to help scientists generate new ideas and research proposals.

Agents can do more – and get more wrong

Despite the hype, AI agents come loaded with caveats. Both Anthropic and OpenAI, for example, prescribe active human supervision to minimise errors and risks.

OpenAI also says its ChatGPT agent is “high risk” due to potential for assisting in the creation of biological and chemical weapons. However, the company has not published the data behind this claim so it is difficult to judge.

But the kind of risks agents may pose in real-world situations are shown by Anthropic’s Project Vend. Vend assigned an AI agent to run a staff vending machine as a small business – and the project disintegrated into hilarious yet shocking hallucinations and a fridge full of tungsten cubes instead of food.

In another cautionary tale, a coding agent deleted a developer’s entire database, later saying it had “panicked”.

Agents in the office

Nevertheless, agents are already finding practical applications.

In 2024, Telstra heavily deployed Microsoft copilot subscriptions. The company says AI-generated meeting summaries and content drafts save staff an average of 1–2 hours per week.

Many large enterprises are pursuing similar strategies. Smaller companies too are experimenting with agents, such as Canberra-based construction firm Geocon’s use of an interactive AI agent to manage defects in its apartment developments.

Human and other costs

At present, the main risk from agents is technological displacement. As agents improve, they may replace human workers across many sectors and types of work. At the same time, agent use may also accelerate the decline of entry-level white-collar jobs.

People who use AI agents are also at risk. They may rely too much on the AI, offloading important cognitive tasks. And without proper supervision and guardrails, hallucinations, cyberattacks and compounding errors can very quickly derail an agent from its task and goals into causing harm, loss and injury.

The true costs are also unclear. All generative AI systems use a lot of energy, which will in turn affect the price of using agents – especially for more complex tasks.

Learn about agents – and build your own

Despite these ongoing concerns, we can expect AI agents will become more capable and more present in our workplaces and daily lives. It’s not a bad idea to start using (and perhaps building) agents yourself, and understanding their strengths, risks and limitations.

For the average user, agents are most accessible through Microsoft copilot studio. This comes with inbuilt safeguards, governance and an agent store for common tasks.

For the more ambitious, you can build your own AI agent with just five lines of code using the Langchain framework.

The Conversation

Daswin de Silva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. AI agents are here. Here’s what to know about what they can do – and how they can go wrong – https://theconversation.com/ai-agents-are-here-heres-what-to-know-about-what-they-can-do-and-how-they-can-go-wrong-261579

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Donald Trump cannot make the Epstein files go away. Will this be the story that brings him down?

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Conspiracy theories are funny things.

The most enduring ones usually take hold for two reasons: first, because there’s some grain of truth to them, and second, because they speak to foundational historical divisions.

The theories morph and change, distorting the grain of truth at their centre beyond reality. In the process, they reinforce and deepen existing divisions, encouraging hateful blindness.

US President Donald Trump is perhaps the most successful conspiracy trafficker in modern American history.

Trump built his political career by trading on conspiracy. These have included a combination of racist birther conspiracies about former president Barack Obama, nebulous ideas about the “Deep State” that conspired against the interests of regular Americans, and nods to a more recent online universe centered on QAnon that alleged a Satanist ring of “elite” pedophiles involving Hillary Clinton was trafficking children.

These theories all had their own grain of truth and tapped into deep-seated historical fears. For example, Obama does have Kenyan heritage, and his Blackness threatened many white Americans’ sense of their own power.

Revelations about disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein’s trafficking in children and the way in which that implicated the “elite” of New York seemed to confirm at least parts of the final theory. It tapped into the belief – one that does have some basis in reality – that America’s elite play by rules of their own, above justice and accountability.

In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump increasingly engaged with this online universe. He seemed to quietly enjoy suggestions that he might be “Q” – the anonymous leader who, according to the theory, was going to break the paedophile ring wide open in a “day of reckoning”.

Many of Trump’s perennially online supporters based their championing of him around these conspiracy theories. QAnon believers were among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 2021. A core section of Trump’s base continues to believe his promises that he would at last reveal the truth – about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Deep State, and Epstein.

That it has long been public knowledge that Trump and Epstein had a longstanding friendship did not impinge on these beliefs.

Conspiracy theories have swirled around Epstein since at least his first arrest nearly two decades ago, in 2006. After allegations of unlawful sex with a minor, Epstein was charged with soliciting prostitution. This elicited suggestions he was receiving special treatment because of his elite status as a New York financier and philanthropist.

That pattern continued over the next decade as accusations multiplied, culminating in his arrest in 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking, including to a private island. The allegations touched the global elite, including former president Bill Clinton, the United Kingdom’s Prince Andrew, and Trump. In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his cell, allegedly by suicide – adding further fuel to the already intense conspiracy fire.

Epstein’s arrest and death occurred during the first Trump administration. Since then, there has been a steady trickle of accusations and revelations that have increased pressure on the administration to declassify and release material relating to the case. Many of Trump’s most loyal supporters, including a set of influential podcasters and influencers, have built their audiences around Epstein and the insistence that the truth be revealed.

Early in the life of the current administration, Attorney-General Pam Bondi – whom Trump is wont to treat as his personal lawyer – said she was reviewing the Epstein “client list”.

In the past few weeks, however, the administration has indicated it will not release the list or other materials relating to the case. At the same time, more information about Trump’s relationship with Epstein has trickled out, including more photos of the two together. It’s hard to deny the sense there is more to come.

Trump’s posting about the issue, despite his apparent wish to divert from it, seems only to compel more interest. Sections of his online conspiracy base, including vocal supporters such as Tucker Carlson, are outraged at what they see as a betrayal. Reports suggest a significant rift developing between Trump and key backer Rupert Murdoch over the issue. Democrats, rightly, sense weakness.



Read more:
Could Rupert Murdoch bring down Donald Trump? A court case threatens more than just their relationship

Loyal Republicans seem rattled enough that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called an early summer recess, sending congresspeople home in an apparent effort to avoid any forced vote on the issue.

The obvious inference – though it is inference only – is that Trump and Republicans are so worried about what is in the Epstein material they would rather cop strong backlash from the base, looking scared and weak, than release the information. If nothing else, that is a guaranteed way to fuel an already raging fire.

Trump’s tanking approval rating and the salience of this issue lead to an obvious question: is this going to be the thing that finally scratches the Teflon president? Will his base turn on him at last?

If history is anything to go by, that seems unlikely. Trump is remarkably resilient, using crises like this to consolidate his power. Trump commands loyalty, and he has it from Bondi, Johnson and others in this weakened and increasingly ideologically driven federal government. And his conspiracy-fuelled base is in so deep that turning on the president now is not just a question of admitting error, but one of core identity.

US mainstream media has long pursued a “gotcha” approach to Trump, driven by a model of journalism that still seeks out smoking guns and dreams of Watergate. Not unlike the conspiracy theories it reports on, this framing hopes for a neat, clear resolution to the story of US politics. But politics doesn’t work like that – especially not for Trump.

From the outside, Trump’s attempts to pivot on the issue and build on his existing conspiracies around Obama and Hillary Clinton might look feeble, but they are tried and true. Trump is now focused on fanning theories around Obama and Clinton, broadening them to include accusations of “treason”. Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard went so far as to claim Obama had “manufactured […] a years-long coup against President Trump”. Even reporting on these claims with rightful incredulity adds fuel to the raging fire.

In the personality cult of an authoritarian leader, conspiracy is easily weaponised against enemies, perceived and real. In the febrile environment of US politics, these conspiracy theories tap into and encourage a long vein of white supremacy and racial revanchism that has shaped American politics since even before the nation’s founding.

Trump can morph and change conspiracy theories like no one else, building on fears and deepening existing divisions. He understands the power of pointing to “enemies from within”, and just how well that reinforces the narrative he has already so successfully ingrained in US political culture. We underestimate him, and the power of conspiracy theory, at our peril.

The Conversation

Emma Shortis is Director of International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.

– ref. Donald Trump cannot make the Epstein files go away. Will this be the story that brings him down? – https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-cannot-make-the-epstein-files-go-away-will-this-be-the-story-that-brings-him-down-261843

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The celebrity halo effect: why abuse allegations against powerful men like Brad Pitt are so easily forgotten

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jamilla Rosdahl, Senior Lecturer, Australian College of Applied Psychology

Last month, actor Brad Pitt stepped onto the Formula One circuit as the leading man of the high-octane film F1, backed by Apple Studios, Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Pitt’s own Plan B Entertainment.

During the publicity campaign, cameras followed Pitt at every twist and turn, beaming his heartthrob persona to audiences. The coverage was gushing, with few mentions of the 2016 allegations of physical and emotional abuse made by Angelina Jolie, the award-winning actor and Pitt’s former partner.

Pitt was never charged over these allegations, but he was under considerable public scrutiny when they first came to light.

The tone has since shifted. Now, many media outlets are focused on Pitt’s clothing, describing him as looking “effortlessly iconic” and someone who is “just trying to have fun with his style” – a seemingly polished return to the limelight.

Pitt is far from an exception. He is part of a well-established pattern of powerful men in Hollywood who rebound from scandal quickly, and with seemingly little repercussion.

Pitt’s career trajectory, bolstered by critical acclaim and PR campaigns, reveals how easily the public memory can be rewritten.

How the media protects accused men

One 2019 study that looked at coverage of rape allegations against Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo highlighted how the media helps construct narratives that favour the accused. The allegations came from American woman Kathryn Mayorga, who accused Ronaldo of raping her in 2009.

The study found Portuguese media and political leaders largely defended Ronaldo, hailing him as a “national hero”. They focused on his career and presumption of innocence, while minimising and discrediting Mayorga’s account.

When Mayorga reopened the case in 2018, alleging coercion into an earlier settlement, the coverage stereotyped her as a “gold digger”, diverting attention away from the issue of sexual violence. Reports also emphasised “collateral damages”, such as Ronaldo’s club avoiding matches in the United States.

These findings underscore how the “celebrity halo” can compromise serious coverage of allegations.

According to Karen Boyle, gender studies professor and author of the 2018 book #MeToo, Weinstein and Feminism, mainstream media and celebrity culture systemically protect powerful men accused of violence against women.

Celebrity culture is fundamentally patriarchal, Boyle argues, and will centre men even when they’re found to be perpetrators. She writes:

Even when these men fall, they fall spectacularly, with all eyes on them […] Their stories dominate.

Instead of drawing attention to female survivors, media narratives orbit around the accused celebrity – including their downfall, legacy and potential redemption.

The machinery of ‘redemption’

The post-#MeToo era promised a reckoning. Survivors were to be heard, and powerful men held accountable. Yet the cultural reset hasn’t been what many supporters of the movement hoped for.

Boyle argues we must understand #MeToo in relation to an ongoing history of popular misogyny which normalises men’s abuse of women.

The #MeToo movement has faced mounting backlash since it went viral in 2017. Articles in Vox and Dame Magazine highlight how public sympathy is increasingly shifting towards accused men, recasting them as victims of “cancel culture” while sidelining survivors.

Online platforms such as Instagram, Reddit and Youtbe have also created space for public commentators to blame victim-survivors and make excuses for famous male perpetrators.

And it’s not just about attraction-leniency theory, wherein physically attractive people are judged more favourably. It’s also about race.

One 2015 study found media coverage of intimate partner violence by celebrity men was more likely to be portrayed as “criminal” when the man was black.

“Reports are more likely to include excuses for men’s violence against women when the coverage is of a white celebrity than when the celebrity is black,” said the author Joanna Pepin.

White men in Hollywood accumulate prestige, status and connections that operate like currency, buffering them from consequences that would derail the careers of others.

Ideology, power and coercive control

As a scholar who has been analysing coercive control for more than ten years, I argue power operates not just through institutions, but through discourse: through who gets to speak, who is believed, what is remembered, and what is erased.

Belief is often unconscious. The public may know violence occurred, but still act as though it didn’t. People choose to forget, to preserve the comforting fiction their favourite heartthrob is a good man.

My research argues coercive control isn’t limited to perpetrators of domestic violence, but is a widespread tactic employed by high-profile men to assert power and dominance.

It operates like a modern panopticon. Powerful men can use gendered power and social status to not only trap and discipline victims within an invisible prison, but can extend this control to entire communities.

Importantly, this control can be subtle. It is often hidden behind performative niceness – hard to see and harder to prosecute.

Shifting the lens

Gender studies scholar Judith Butler argues Trump-era politics have actively distorted public conversations about gender, power and accountability. They explain in one interview:

What we’re seeing with the Trump administration is a normalisation of hatred, of xenophobia, masculinity and misogyny that emboldens far-right groups and legitimises violence against vulnerable populations.

Moving forward, we need to collectively recognise how media narratives can contribute to our collective amnesia of violence against women.

We also need to prioritise teaching younger generations about masculine culture and the dangers of gendered violence. And when survivors speak, the focus shouldn’t be on whether they seem “credible” or “emotional enough”, but on the structures that may embolden the men they are accusing.

The Conversation

Jamilla Rosdahl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The celebrity halo effect: why abuse allegations against powerful men like Brad Pitt are so easily forgotten – https://theconversation.com/the-celebrity-halo-effect-why-abuse-allegations-against-powerful-men-like-brad-pitt-are-so-easily-forgotten-261101

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There’s enough natural hydrogen in the Earth’s crust to help power the green energy transition

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Omid Haeri Ardakani, Research scientist at Natural Resources Canada; Andjunct associate professor, University of Calgary

Since their formation billions of years ago, the oldest parts of the Earth’s continental rocks have generated natural hydrogen in massive amounts. Some of this hydrogen may have accumulated within accessible traps and reservoirs under the Earth’s surface. This store has the potential to contribute to the global hydrogen economy for hundreds of years.

This has been demonstrated by the production of near-pure hydrogen from a single gas field in Mali, attracting the attention of governments in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe.

There is also interest from major venture capital investors and international resource companies. By the end of 2023, 40 companies were exploring natural hydrogen globally. That has likely doubled since 2024.



Read more:
Why green hydrogen — but not grey — could help solve climate change

Hydrogen as a resource

Hydrogen resources have long been a multi-billion-dollar market, even before recent interest in hydrogen as a contributor to the green energy transition. The environments and conditions that result in natural hydrogen accumulation occur globally. But one of the barriers to investment in many jurisdictions is regulatory, as hydrogen had not previously been considered as a resource.

Natural hydrogen can be used to decarbonize hard-to-abate but globally critical industries. Industries that use hydrogen include fuel refining (about 44 per cent), ammonia and fertilizer production for food sustainability (about 34 per cent), and steel manufacturing (about five per cent).

According to a recent British government policy briefing document, addressing this requires governments to include hydrogen as a listed natural resource. Future uses for hydrogen may include long-distance transportation and contributions to the decarbonization of the mining industry.

High carbon footprint

Most of the hydrogen used today is produced from fossil fuels. Because of this, hydrogen production contributes about 2.5 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Efforts to produce low-carbon (green) hydrogen from renewable electricity and carbon capture and storage technologies remain expensive.

Natural hydrogen has a carbon footprint comparable to or below that of green hydrogen. The two will likely be complementary, but estimates are uncertain as natural hydrogen is as yet an unproven resource.

Developing strategies could determine whether hydrogen from any source is an economically viable resource. For natural hydrogen, exploration strategies have to be developed to find and extract natural deposits of hydrogen at an economically feasible cost. This also needs incentives that include natural hydrogen in exploration or production licenses.



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Hydrogen and helium

The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated there’s enough accessible natural hydrogen to supply global hydrogen demand for about 200 years.

Hydrogen forms in the Earth’s crust through two natural geological processes: chemical reactions between natural groundwaters and iron-rich minerals and water radiolysis. Water molecules are broken by natural background radioactivity in rocks releasing hydrogen — and helium, a valuable element included in Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy — as a byproduct.

The search for helium began in Canada in the 1920s, but it is only recently that systematic commercial exploration for helium has restarted. By the 1980s, systematic studies of natural hydrogen began in Canada, Finland and parts of Africa as part of research on subsurface microbial life.

Renewed interest

An unusual coincidence sparked the current global interest in hydrogen. An accidental discovery of the small natural hydrogen gas field in Mali coincided with the publication of extensive historical data from the former Soviet Union, drawing attention to hydrogen’s immense potential as a clean power resource. Australia, France and the U.S. were among the first countries to re-investigate historical natural hydrogen.

Natural hydrogen and helium systems have similarities to petroleum systems, requiring a source rock, a migration pathway and accumulation in a reservoir. The infrastructure for natural hydrogen wells would be comparable to hydrocarbon wells, albeit with changes in well completion and drilling methods.

The footprint of a natural hydrogen production project would take up much less space to deliver the same amount of energy compared to a green hydrogen production facility, which requires solar or wind farms and electrolyzers.

Similarly, natural hydrogen projects do not need to draw on surface water resources, which are scarce in many parts of the world.

bubbles moving through a grey tunnel
Surface release of hydrogen bubbles from the Canadian Shield.
(Stable Isotope Lab/University of Toronto), CC BY

Future policies

Some jurisdictions lack policies regulating hydrogen exploration. In others, regulation falls under existing mining or hydrocarbon policies. The lack of clear regulations in areas with high potential for natural hydrogen exploration — such as the U.S., Canada, India and parts of Africa and Europe — is a major obstacle for exploration.

An absence of regulation slows down exploration and land acquisition, and prevents the decision-making required for developing infrastructure. And critically, it means that no community consultations are undertaken to ensure the social acceptance essential for the success of such projects.

A project in South Australia demonstrates what legislation can accomplish. Once regulation of natural hydrogen exploration and capture was implemented, the government received dozens of applications from companies interested in natural hydrogen exploration.

The appetite for exploration is clearly there, but policy and regulatory solutions are required. New exploration projects will provide critical new data to understand natural hydrogen’s potential to provide green energy.

The Conversation

Omid Haeri Ardakani has received funding from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).

Barbara Sherwood Lollar receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.

Chris Ballentine is founder of and owns shares in Snowfox Discovery Ltd, a hydrogen exploration company. He receives research funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (U.K.) and the National Science Foundation (U.S.), in a joint grant, as well as the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization and the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research.

– ref. There’s enough natural hydrogen in the Earth’s crust to help power the green energy transition – https://theconversation.com/theres-enough-natural-hydrogen-in-the-earths-crust-to-help-power-the-green-energy-transition-256936

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How Marvel’s Fantastic Four discovered the human in the superhuman

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By J. Andrew Deman, Professor of English, University of Waterloo

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the second cinematic reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise, and there’s a lot riding on this film.

While cinema-goers have responded enthusiastically to many of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the history of the Fantastic Four on the silver screen is less heralded.

All the previous Fantastic Four films have been “commercial and critical failures,” with the 2015 film being an infamous box office bomb.

Yet in comics history, the Fantastic Four have been up to the challenge of driving a popular media enterprise forward — something that the film producers and Marvel fans alike are both now hoping for.

‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ trailer.

In the 1960s — the era in which Fantastic Four: First Steps, is notably set — the comics presented a new class of superhero.

From their 1961 debut, Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm/the Invisible Girl, Johnny Storm/the Human Torch and Ben Grimm/the Thing were celebrities who rented office space in a Manhattan highrise and found themselves variously beloved and reviled by both the public and the government.

Comic book cover titled the Fantastic Four showing a large green monster grasping a woman while passerby look alarmed and a few figures try to intervene.
Cover of ‘The Fantastic Four’ No. 1, 1961.
(Marvel)

The team also rejected secret identities. Until the third issue of their series, they even eschewed superhero costumes (in part because of a restriction imposed by the owner of Marvel’s then-distributor, DC Comics).

Pushed representational boundaries

The Fantastic Four comics of the 1960s also pushed boundaries in a number of significant ways. They featured the first pair of married superheroes (Reed and Sue wed in 1965) and the first superhero pregnancy (Sue gave birth to her son Franklin in 1968).

In 1966, Fantastic Four No. 52 introduced the Black Panther, who is widely recognized as the first high-profile Black superhero.



Read more:
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And though not canonical until 2002, it has been suggested by scholars that Ben Grimm was always envisioned as a Jewish superhero by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, offering another milestone in representation (at least for those readers attuned to the character’s Jewish coding).

These milestones emphasize a dedicated concern for the human aspects of superheroes.

A family with relatable issues

Set amid fittingly fantastic science-fiction landscapes inspired by Space Age optimism was a story about a family who “fought among themselves, sometimes over petty jealousies and insults,” in the words of Christopher Pizzino, an American scholar of contemporary literature, film and television.

This approach of building character dynamics out of internal conflict proved deeply influential.

Famed comics writer Grant Morrison argues that through the example of Fantastic Four, “the Marvel superhero was born: a hero who tussled not only with monsters and mad scientists but also with relatable personal issues.”

In his bestselling book All the Marvels, comics critic and historian Douglas Wolk concurs that the “first hundred issues of Fantastic Four are Marvel’s Bible and manual,” establishing the style, theme, genre and approach of the company’s comics for decades to come.

A crowd of superhero figures.
Marvel’s universe continued to expand following the Fantastic Four debut.
(Marvel)

Defining personal conflicts

In contrast to moral paragons such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (all published by rival DC Comics), each member of Marvel’s Fantastic Four had defining personal conflicts.

Reed Richards, the team’s patriarch, was a world-altering genius who often fell victim to his own hubristic ambition.

Two years before American feminist author Betty Friedan identified “the problem that has no name” in The Feminine Mystique (that post-war suburban housewives faced social expectations of being fully fulfilled as wives and mothers, the Fantastic Four gave audiences Sue Storm, with the superpower to render herself — and others — invisible at will.

Storm, according to scholar Ramzi Fawaz, “made the concept of women’s social invisibility an object of visual critique by making invisible bodies and objects conspicuous on the comic book page.”

Her younger brother, Johnny Storm, a playboy and showboat, had a lot of growing up to do, a journey that was frustrated by his flashy powers.

Ben Grimm, Reed’s college roommate turned best friend turned rock monster, oscillated between childlike rage and world-weary depression, his rocky hide granting him super-strength and invulnerability while burdening him with social isolation.

While none of us are likely to acquire superpowers through exposure to cosmic rays like the Four, we’ve all dealt with anxiety and grief like these heroes.

Origin of the Marvel universe

The world of the Fantastic Four didn’t just feel unusually human. It also felt unusually lived in, partly because the Fantastic Four comics of the 1960s weren’t just the origin of the Marvel style of storytelling — they were also the origin of the Marvel universe.

Fantastic Four began and became the model for Marvel’s shared continuity universe, in which dozens of superheroes passed in and out of each other’s stories and occasionally intersected long enough for whole crossover story arcs and events. For a time, Marvel’s superheroes even aged alongside their readers, with teenage characters like Johnny Storm graduating high school and enrolling in college.

Previous superhero comics hadn’t embraced this shared continuity in a meaningful way, tending to prioritize discrete stories that had no effect on future tales. But Fantastic Four pitched what comics scholar Charles Hatfield calls “intertitle continuity,” which quickly became “Marvel’s main selling tool.”

Case in point, the Fantastic Four shared the cover of 1963’s Amazing Spider-Man No. 1, helping sell the newly created wall-crawler to their adoring readers.

Voluminous, chaotic universe

The 1965 wedding of Reed and Sue in Fantastic Four Annual No. 3 showcased how quickly the Marvel comics universe became vibrantly voluminous and charmingly chaotic.

This event featured at least 19 superheroes fighting 28 supervillains and foregrounded the Fantastic Four’s symbolic mother and father as the progenitors of an extended super-family.

It also featured a cameo by the Fantastic Four’s creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, previously introduced in 1963’s Fantastic Four No. 10 as the official creators of imaginary adventures starring the “real” Fantastic Four, further blurring the boundary between fiction and reality.

Decades later, this sprawling comics universe would become a sprawling cinematic universe. This informs the pressure facing the latest Fantastic Four adaptation.

Phase 6 of universe

Fantastic Four: First Steps marks the start of what Marvel calls “Phase Six” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which began in 2008 with the first Marvel Studios film, Iron Man.

Essentially, Fantastic Four: First Steps is meant to launch a new cluster of shared universe stories, just as Fantastic Four No. 1 did for Marvel Comics in the 1960s.

This cluster will culminate in the release of Avengers: Secret Wars in December 2027. Will Marvel’s first family deliver?

This article is co-authored by Anna Peppard, an independent scholar and editor of ‘Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero.’

The Conversation

J. Andrew Deman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How Marvel’s Fantastic Four discovered the human in the superhuman – https://theconversation.com/how-marvels-fantastic-four-discovered-the-human-in-the-superhuman-260883