Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, Assistant Professor in Health Ethics, Simon Fraser University

Eight months before the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, OpenAI knew something was wrong. The company’s automated review system had flagged Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account for interactions involving scenarios of gun violence. Roughly a dozen employees were aware. Some advocated contacting police. Instead, OpenAI banned the account, but didn’t refer it to law enforcement because it didn’t meet the “threshold required” at the time.

On Feb. 10, Van Rootselaar killed eight people (her mother, her 11-year-old half-brother and six others at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School) before dying of a self-inflicted wound.

This case is not simply about one company’s misjudgment. It exposes the absence of any Canadian legal framework for assigning responsibility when an AI company possesses information that could prevent violence.

As a researcher in health ethics and AI governance at Simon Fraser University, I study how algorithmic systems reshape decision-making in high-stakes settings. The Tumbler Ridge tragedy sits squarely at this intersection: a private corporation made a clinical-style risk assessment it was never equipped to make, in a legal environment that gave it no guidance.

The digital confessional problem

Generative AI chatbots are not social media. Social media functions as a public square where posts can be monitored and flagged by other users. Chatbot interactions are private, intimate and designed to be accommodating. Users routinely disclose fears, fantasies and violent ideations to systems engineered to respond with conversational warmth.

In clinical practice, this kind of disclosure triggers a well-established duty. The Tarasoff principle, adopted across Canadian provinces through mental health legislation, imposes upon therapists a duty to warn if they determine that a patient poses a credible threat to an identifiable person, even if it means breaching confidentiality. But that duty rests on the clinical judgment of trained professionals who understand the difference between ideation and intent.

Arguably, OpenAI tried to mirror this clinical standard. But the people making these assessments are software engineers and content moderators, not forensic psychologists. The company itself acknowledged the tension, citing the risks of “over-enforcement” and the distress of unannounced police visits for young people.

The real question is not whether OpenAI’s reasoning was defensible in isolation. It’s whether a private corporation should be making this determination at all.

A vacuum where legislation should be

Federal AI Minister Evan Solomon, who intends to meet with OpenAI representatives today on Feb. 24 about this issue, said on Feb. 21 that he was “deeply disturbed” by the revelations, adding the federal government is reviewing “a suite of measures” and that “all options are on the table.” But those options remain undefined because the legislative tools that would have enabled them no longer exist.

The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, embedded in Bill C-27, was supposed to be Canada’s answer to AI regulation. The Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) would have addressed harmful digital content. Both died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025.

What remains is a voluntary code of conduct with no legal force and no consequences for non-compliance. When OpenAI flagged Van Rootselaar’s account, its only obligation was to its own internal policy. Banning the account resolved the company’s liability while leaving a person expressing violent ideations disconnected from any intervention pathway.

Canada’s privacy law compounds the problem. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act does contain an emergency exception: section 7(3)(e) permits disclosure without consent “to a person who needs the information because of an emergency that threatens the life, health or security of an individual.” But this provision was drafted for clear-cut crises, not for the probabilistic threat indicators that AI chatbot interactions generate. For a foreign corporation navigating this ambiguity, uncertainty favours inaction.

What Canada needs now

Canada’s next attempt at digital governance must recognize that human-to-AI interactions are fundamentally different from social media posts. Three elements are essential:

1. Binding legislation with clear legal thresholds for when AI companies must refer flagged interactions to authorities. These thresholds must be developed with mental health professionals, law enforcement and privacy experts, not left to individual corporations.

2. An independent digital safety commission as a third-party triage body. When an AI company identifies severely concerning interactions, it should refer the case to trained threat-assessment professionals rather than making the call internally or triggering an immediate armed police response.

3. Modernized privacy legislation that provides explicit legal clarity for AI-specific disclosure, resolving the ambiguity that currently rewards doing nothing.

At the AI summit that took place in New Delhi from Feb. 16 to 20, 86 countries, including Canada, pledged to promote “safe, trustworthy and robust” AI. No concrete commitments followed. OpenAI’s Sam Altman stressed the urgency of international AI regulation and proposed an international body for AI safety norms modelled on the International Atomic Energy Agency, an irony not lost on anyone following the Tumbler Ridge revelations.

Minister Solomon says all options are on the table. Families of shooting victims, survivors and a devastated community in Tumbler Ridge are living with the cost of leaving regulation options open for too long.

Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon receives funding from Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar Award and the US National Institutes of Health.

– ref. Danger was flagged, but not reported: What the Tumbler Ridge tragedy reveals about Canada’s AI governance vacuum – https://theconversation.com/danger-was-flagged-but-not-reported-what-the-tumbler-ridge-tragedy-reveals-about-canadas-ai-governance-vacuum-276718

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Maha Khawaja, PhD Student, Health and Society, McMaster University

It’s 1 a.m. The argument is over, but you keep running it back in your head anyway. You replay the tone, timing and that one sentence that landed wrong. So you open an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot and type, “Am I right or am I overreacting? What do I say to what they said? What did they mean by XYZ?”

Research on attachment, emotion regulation and online discourse helps explain why turning to AI is becoming increasingly popular . The reassurance that it provides, however, can consolidate a one-sided interpretation far too quickly and, ultimately, train expectations that real relationships struggle to meet.

But for many, that’s where relationship support begins nowadays. The privacy of AI chatbots has become the space people go to first, especially given that the alternative — professional help or family and friends — often either involves paying, explaining yourself at length or risking judgment at exactly the moment you feel least steady.

However, while it’s a private moment and a keyboard click away, should we be looking for neutral relationship advice from AI chatbots?

Why does AI feel like support?

At a time when therapy is expensive or out of reach, and most relationship learning comes from media rather than practical skill-building, immediacy can be deeply appealing for some.

The appeal intensifies when relationship talk implicates identity. Questions like “Am I needy? Am I unlovable? Am I the problem?” carry shame, which makes disclosure feel risky. A chatbot offers a low-stakes space to narrate events and voice what might feel too exposed with friends or family.

Notably, chat-based relationship coaching can feel immediately satisfying, and research on reward-based engagement in online platforms suggests that quick, reinforcing feedback can encourage people to come back again and again, forming an addictive effect that chatbot interfaces may amplify.

Related work on chatbots also finds that when users feel a sense of closeness with AI, they report higher satisfaction and stronger intentions to reuse it, which helps explain why the use of these tools can become a habit instead of a one-time check-in. Interestingly, recent research also notes that people with anxious attachment styles are more likely to become emotionally dependent on AI.

From anonymous forums to algorithmic advice

Before chatbots, people often did this work through anonymous crowds in forums like Reddit, and research on online disclosure and support communities shows that anonymity and low social cost can increase willingness to share, especially around stigmatized or emotionally charged experiences.

In those spaces, you can disclose without being fully known, gather language from strangers and feel less alone with your own thoughts. AI distills that and suggests next steps, which can make disclosure easier while also nudging one reading of the situation into something that feels settled.

A quick, overly simplified fix.

However, over time, instant affirmation can train expectations for constant reassurance and rapid closure that intimate relationships rarely sustain, since intimacy develops through slower, reciprocal work under strain.

AI as a relationship rehearsal room

In practice, people use AI for far more than crisis.

Many use it as a communication coach, such as for drafting messages after conflict, softening tone and practising repair language before they speak.

Others use it as a rehearsal room for difficult conversations or as a planning tool for reconnecting, whether through date ideas, routines or small rituals that rebuild intimacy after distance.

It also shows up readily in the less visible work of relationships.

That could look like asking AI about the benefits of planning sex, how to navigate menopause and vaginal dryness or what lubricant to use with a dilator after cancer treatment. Here, AI helps make sense of situations that may be difficult to discuss with others and helps bring clarity to an unfamiliar field.

Where this becomes complicated is not simply that people use AI, but how its structure changes what counts as a good explanation. Because the system only has access to one narrated perspective, it can produce a coherent interpretation with high confidence while keeping out perhaps major details like context, history, power dynamics or what the other person has said.

Assisting, but not replacing, relational work

Though it may seem coherent, AI readily compresses nuance into a single storyline and can only focus on a singular conclusion. A chatbot can only respond to what it is given; trained professionals probe, clarify and notice gaps.

This isn’t only informal use of general chatbots either. Some tools are explicitly designed to mimic relationship coaching and therapeutic support, like Mojo or Amanda.ai, and some are even designed to function as an “AI companion” and romantic partner.

AI’s appeal also comes with real costs and risks, including energy-intensive infrastructure, corporate and political interests that shape what these systems learn and reproduce, the possibility of misinformation when nuance is missing and privacy concerns when an individual’s intensely personal disclosures are routed through data systems they do not control.

AI can support reflection and communication, but the substance of a relationship is still built and repaired in real time through choices partners make with each other. So, if you want a nuanced human answer, then just ask the humans in your life what they meant when they said “XYZ.”

Maha Khawaja 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. Why people are turning to AI first for relationship advice — and why they shouldn’t – https://theconversation.com/why-people-are-turning-to-ai-first-for-relationship-advice-and-why-they-shouldnt-272797

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Hardy, Professor, Department of Ob/Gyn and Physiology and Pharmacology, Western University

Schizophrenia is a serious mental health disorder that is characterized by psychosis, making it difficult for a person to tell what is real. It impacts about one per cent of the Canadian population and is linked to major health challenges, including a shorter life span.

Many factors can increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, such as prenatal environmental conditions (for example, malnutrition or drug exposure), family history, childhood trauma and growing up in an urban environment.

However, there are still no reliable biomarkers that can predict early risk. This is important because early diagnosis leads to better treatment and outcomes for patients. Researchers are now looking at the placenta as a possible source of early indicators of schizophrenia risk.

The placenta-brain axis

The placenta can “record” what happens during pregnancy and can reflect both healthy and unhealthy conditions for the baby. This idea is known as the placenta-brain axis, which suggests that when the placenta is negatively affected, brain development may also be harmed in both the short and long term.

Large clinical studies have shown that in pregnancies resulting in low birth weight babies, certain genetic markers in the placenta are changed. These markers are strongly linked to a higher risk of schizophrenia and other negative behavioural outcomes (for example, autism, impaired cognition) in children.

There is also strong evidence connecting cannabis use during pregnancy to harmful effects on a child’s brain development, including a higher risk of schizophrenia. This is especially concerning in Canada, where cannabis was legalized in 2018. Since then, cannabis use during pregnancy has increased, with the highest reported rate of 24 per cent among pregnant teens (ages 13 to 19 years).

Although prenatal cannabis use is known to be associated with low birth weight, it is not well understood whether cannabis exposure affects the same placental biomarkers linked to schizophrenia. My laboratory, which has experience studying the effects of drug exposure during pregnancy, explored this question in a study published in Biology of Reproduction in January.

THC exposure

As a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University, I worked with my research team and collaborators, including master of science student Andrea Kocsis, Enzo Perez Valenzuela, Ph.D., David Natale, Ph.D., and Steven Laviolette, Ph.D. to investigate whether THC (the main psychoactive component of cannabis) changes these known placental schizophrenia markers.

First, we used a preclinical rodent model in which pregnant animals were given edible THC mixed with Nutella. We found that both male and female offspring exposed to THC showed reduced prepulse inhibition early in life. Prepulse inhibition is a psychological test commonly used when diagnosing schizophrenia in humans. Specifically, the prepulse inhibition test measures sensorimotor gating — the brain’s ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli — by observing how a weak, preceding stimulus (prepulse) reduces the startle response to a subsequent loud noise (pulse).

More importantly, we discovered that the placentae of these THC-exposed offspring showed increases in several human placental markers linked to schizophrenia risk.

We then tested whether this also occurs in a human cell culture model. We found that isolated human placental cells treated short-term (24 hours) with THC showed similar increases in these schizophrenia-related genes in these cells.

Identifying risks

This study has important clinical implications. Although stopping cannabis use during pregnancy is always recommended, it can be difficult for many people due to social or habitual dependence. As a result, some children are exposed to cannabis before birth without having any choice.

By identifying cannabis-specific placental markers linked to schizophrenia, there is potential to reduce negative behavioural outcomes early in life through psychological or dietary interventions. Since schizophrenia is usually diagnosed between ages 16 and 30, being able to identify risk at birth would be extremely valuable. Moreover, testing the placenta after delivery could become a practical way to assess schizophrenia risk.

Further research is needed to understand whether other components of cannabis, such as cannabidiol (CBD), also affect neurodevelopment or alter these placental markers. It is also imperative to explore whether these markers can help predict other outcomes, including adverse psychological conditions, autism or cognitive impairments.

Additionally, because the pre-conception health and lifestyle of fathers as well as mothers can affect the placenta, it is also possible that consumption of cannabinoids by either parent before pregnancy could affect placental health and increase schizophrenia risk, but this requires further study.

In the meantime, our findings provide important functional evidence for clinicians and regulatory agencies, such as Health Canada, as they continue to make decisions and policies regarding the safety of cannabis use during pregnancy.

Daniel Hardy receives funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR).

– ref. Can the placenta predict schizophrenia risk? Lessons from prenatal cannabis exposure – https://theconversation.com/can-the-placenta-predict-schizophrenia-risk-lessons-from-prenatal-cannabis-exposure-274381

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Philippe Blondel, Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics, University of Bath

Climate change is having a profound impact on the Arctic. We know that the region is warming significantly faster than the global average, resulting in the melting of sea ice and disrupted habitats.

But climate change is also affecting the Arctic in ways few people may consider. It is making the Arctic Ocean a noisier place. For the region’s wildlife, this increasingly noisy environment is having profound impacts on their lives.

Anyone who lives in an urban environment knows how tiring it can be. Living next to busy roads is exhausting, with constant noise, day in, day out. The same is true in the Arctic Ocean, where melting sea ice is making way for increasing human activity. This is even more important in water, where animals use sounds to communicate, to navigate and to find prey, or avoid becoming prey.

Recent research on fish sounds explains how sound can be used for marine conservation. We should avoid introducing loud sounds in the oceans because it changes the soundscapes the animals have evolved to live in, and because it affects them directly. And just like air pollution, sound pollution knows no borders.

Ocean observatories can record these sounds and tell us how loud they are, how long they last and how they affect their surroundings. This is important because the world is changing rapidly, especially in the Arctic, and human impacts are increasing.

Newly published research, conducted by colleagues and me, used 10 years of underwater observations from 2015 to 2024 to quantify the impacts of ships and other sources of loud sounds in Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay), Nvt., on the local environment and to examine the best ways to measure their effects on local soundscapes. We found some surprising facts, making us look (or rather, listen) to the Arctic in different ways.

Sound is essential underwater

Studies show that ambient sound levels in the Arctic seas are currently very low, and that marine life will therefore be more sensitive to any increase. Ships are the second loudest source of underwater sounds after seismic prospecting and pile-driving. As the Arctic opens up to human activities, ships are bound to be a big part of it.

But it is not only ships. We found that loud sounds include many other sources: snowmobiles, machinery, aircraft. These sounds vary with the season. In winter, when there is full ice cover and no ships, snowmobiles can affect sound below the ice.

In summer, when there is little to no ice cover, many of the loud sounds come from smaller vessels that are not legally required to carry GPS transponders. They are not picked up by satellites, but they are sizeable contributors to sounds underwater. Other sounds come from machinery, and even from aircraft flying nearby. Like shipping, these sounds should also be part of monitoring and regulating underwater noise in the region.

Because many smaller ships do not use satellite transponders, modelling sound impacts from satellite tracking is an insufficient way to gauge how much noise human activity is generating. That means assessments of underwater noise must be based on actual measurements in the field.

Long-term measurements

Deploying instruments at sea, especially in the Arctic, is challenging and expensive, and therefore generally possible only for short periods. Ocean Networks Canada has been measuring sound in the oceans around Canada for 20 years.

They have installed ocean observatories around the country, in particular in Iqaluktuuttiaq. In partnership with local communities, they aim to provide the scientific measurements necessary for evidence-based actions and initiatives.

Their Ocean Data Portal is a dream come true for scientists: 64,000 sound measurements per second, for years on end, complemented in season with local ice profiling. We also used local weather data from Nav Canada, satellite charts of regional ice cover from the Canadian Ice Service and ship tracks from the Arctic Ship Traffic Database operated by the Arctic Council.

As there is so much data, and because we wanted to contrast two very different seasons, we focused our studies on the months of May, when there is full ice cover and no shipping, and August, when there is little to no ice and more shipping activity.

We did this for 10 years in a row and analyzed the sounds loud enough (more than 10 decibels louder than the weekly background) for long enough (over one minute), identifying where they came from and what frequencies they extended into. There were many surprising sounds.

For example, we could hear footsteps on the ice and snow, the unsuccessful revving up of an engine, followed by something that sounded like kicking, and walking back on snow and ice. These sounds were not loud enough to be an issue. More often, we could hear noise from machines, either on boats or on shore. This sometimes lasted for a long time.

What surprised us was hearing aircraft every now and then. The sounds of the propellers, presumably passing close to our hydrophone. There were many other sounds, including those of marine wildlife, but we focused on sounds loud enough to possibly impact these animals because they were too loud or lasted long enough to be a nuisance.

Our research shows that impactful sounds in this part of the Arctic vary between summer and winter. In summer, where the water is mostly open, this noise can extend to higher frequencies over one kilohertz. Conversely, in winter, when there is no shipping and ice cover isolates the waters below from a lot of sounds, these loud sounds show a span of frequencies lower than one kilohertz. These variations with ice cover and in the frequencies to monitor should be included in the future Arctic baselines.

Improving data collection

Regulations often focus on frequency bands associated with large ships in deep waters (third-octave bands centred on 63 hertz and 125 hertz, to be precise). The European Marine Strategy Framework Directive is often cited as a model, used in Canada and elsewhere. Using the right frequencies is important when considering baselines.

Canada and other Arctic countries are ideally placed to collect the evidence that can define an Arctic marine strategy framework directive. This becomes more urgent as the climate changes, the Arctic opens to human activities and pressures on Arctic resources grow.

Together, we can make a more sustainable ocean. There is much to do, and I am looking forward to working more with Canadian scientists and Arctic communities.

Philippe Blondel receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee. Access to the Arctic Ship Traffic Database used in the underlying study was funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, as part of the United Kingdom- Arctic Council Working Groups – Research and Engagement Scheme 2024/25, working with the Arctic Council Working Groups, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the NERC Arctic Office. Philippe is sometimes consulted by Ocean Networks Canada on technical matters related to passive acoustic monitoring.

– ref. Human activity is making the Arctic’s waters louder – https://theconversation.com/human-activity-is-making-the-arctics-waters-louder-275197

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Charles Conteh, Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Department of Political Science, Brock University

The United States Supreme Court recently struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs imposed under the country’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court stated that the law, intended for national emergencies, does not grant the government the authority to impose tariffs.

In early 2025, Trump invoked the act to impose tariffs on Canada, along with Mexico and China, claiming the countries failed to stop illicit drug trafficking into the United States.

The ruling is the latest episode in a political dust-up between Canada and its neighbour to the south which recently involved the Gordie Howe International Bridge linking Ontario and Michigan.

More than steel or stone, the bridge is a symbol of a shared destiny that both respects and transcends differences. Despite their historical, institutional and political differences, Canada and the United States have bonded economically as neighbours, generating shared prosperity over the past two centuries.

In 2023, I wrote a book chapter Canada and the United States: A Symbiotic Relationship or Complex Entanglement? In that chapter, I posed a question: What if the United States becomes more aggressive and even less open to working co-operatively with Canada? To answer that question, Canada can draw lessons from its centuries-long coexistence with an often erratic neighbour to successfully navigate the economic volatility of the present era.

While the recent Supreme Court ruling presents a setback for Trump, it is unlikely to stop him from using U.S. economic and military might as leverage against Canada and other countries. As Canada navigates this belligerent U.S. government, a lingering question is whether this history of interwoven reciprocity is deteriorating into a complex entanglement of vulnerability.

Two neighbours, different worlds

In the book chapter, I describe the Canada-U.S. relationship as a complex picture of deep interdependence, marked by significant power imbalances, and the creative ways Canada has learned to adapt and prosper.

The economic and political interests of the two countries have diverged and converged in undulating waves over the past 200 years. The two economies are inextricably intertwined across a range of sectors, from natural resources and agriculture to advanced manufacturing. Around 70 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S., and the share of Canada’s merchandise imports from south of the border was around 59 per cent in 2025.

But for Canada, the relationship is more than just economic interdependence. The U.S. has a population of about 342 million and a gross domestic product about 10 times larger than Canada’s. That sets the stage for an asymmetrical relationship whose threads are woven into the fabric of trade and geopolitics.

For Canada, this can sometimes feel like vulnerability. And that vulnerability is increasingly being exploited by the U.S., creating a general feeling of existential crisis and entrapment.

Nevertheless, Canada can draw from its centuries-long experience to navigate the current headwinds. While the smaller of the two neighbours, it is not entirely dependent on the U.S. for influencing global events or harnessing international opportunities.

Canada has been, and still is, an influential power on the international stage. As a G7 nation, Canada is one of the key pillars in the scaffolding of the global economy. This global standing and international influence give it some room to manoeuvre.

Navigating an existential crossroads

First, in the international arena, Canada must diversify economically and geopolitically to build strategic resilience. Prime Minister Mark Carney is already moving on this front by agreeing to ease mutual tariffs with China. With negotiations to renew the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) slated for this year, a diversified trading economy will give Canada much greater leverage to navigate the vulnerabilities of asymmetry.

Second, Canada should draw from its record of championing a rules-based order. In recent years, the country has had to skilfully navigate the crossroads of projecting and defending its global and liberal-democratic values during periods of U.S. flirtations with populism, isolationism and anti-international rhetoric. As a middle power, it derives its strength from the rule of law and by presenting a united front with like-minded nations. A wider set of partners means more buffers against trade policy whiplashes and geopolitical shocks from the U.S.

Third, domestically, loosening inter-provincial trade flows, updating anachronistic regulatory frameworks and pursuing digital data sovereignty strategies should be high priorities to fire the full engine of the economy.

Similarly, as I’ve previously argued, Canada should use its comparative advantages in natural resources to create a strong, well-connected critical minerals supply chain. This would give it significant strategic leverage in the global economy as the world shifts to electrification and renewable energy.

Over the past two centuries, Canada has mastered the complex dance of asymmetry. However, the current crisis takes on an existential proportion that will require new agility, courage and decisiveness. It is an inflection point that will mark a consequential shift for the next generation.

Canada’s nimbleness and agility in navigating this political moment could be an model for other countries that must manoeuvre a world where the old rules no longer apply. It can serve as an example for small and middle powers who must navigate a world where great powers are increasingly belligerent.

Charles Conteh receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. 3 ways Canada can navigate an increasingly erratic and belligerent United States – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-canada-can-navigate-an-increasingly-erratic-and-belligerent-united-states-276035

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joceline Andersen, Assistant Teaching Professor in Communication and English, Thompson Rivers University

In the lead-up to Oscar season, Josh Safdie, the director of Marty Supreme, has been elaborating on the many cameos in his film that build on real-world associations to create a rich cast of characters.

While usually cameo publicity is all about the director’s vision, Marty Supreme’s director of casting, Jennifer Venditti, has also made appearances in press for the film, amid increased recognition for the art of casting.

Marty Supreme is up for nine Oscars, including for casting, the first year this category will be awarded, and Venditti is nominated.

In Marty Supreme, Timothée Chalamet stars as an ambitious table tennis champion running away from his life as a shoe salesman in a largely Jewish slice of 1950s New York. Alongside this star are many other recognizable faces playing cameos.

Finding a famous face in an unexpected place is strangely thrilling. As some of my research has examined, this recognition is the allure behind cameos — small roles where famous and celebrated people play versions of themselves on screen. Cameos are full of contradictions: audiences are taken aback by famous people appearing in front of the camera. They proudly pick out celebrity faces in a crowd.

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Read more:
A brief history of celebrity cameos, from ‘Sunset Boulevard’ to ‘Eurovision Song Contest’

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Robert Pattinson, Pico Iyer

At a January screening, Safdie clued in London audiences to a Robert Pattinson voice cameo. In the film, Pattinson voices an announcer at the British Open for table tennis.

Pico Iyer, the travel writer Safdie knew from his 2019 TED Talk about ping pong, wrote in the New York Times in January about his own small role. This cameo began with a formulaic query email and Zoom call with Safdie and Venditti.

While classic cameos like Jerry Lewis’s appearance in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) were filmed as cutaways that made for a flexible shooting schedule and assembly-line production, Iyer’s role involved shooting on two continents.

Safdie includes Iyer as a fastidious table tennis official, even though Iyer’s talk argues that ping pong transcends competition as the ultimate model for good diplomacy. Iyer’s TED Talk also sketches out the source material for an unusual minor character arc in Marty Supreme. Between the cameo, the New York Times article and the TED Talk, Safdie creates a maze for the viewer to follow outside of the viewing experience.

Stunt casting

Safdie is no stranger to stunt casting. He and his brother’s 2019 drama Uncut Gems starred Adam Sandler as a jeweller, and featured cameos from non-actors such as musical star the Weeknd and former NBA player Kevin Garnett.

The Hollywood Reporter recently detailed allegations about inappropriate behaviour by a non-actor on the Safdie brothers’ 2017 film Good Time that neither brother has commented publicly on. These allegations in the lead-up to the Oscars may have dampened excitement for casting that blurs acting and reality.

In Marty Supreme, many cameos highlight local colour. John Catsimatidis, New York grocery tycoon and former mayoral candidate, plays a well-to-do speculator bankrolling a line of table tennis balls, the Marty Supreme, that gives the film its title.

Kevin O’Leary

Kevin O’Leary, the wealthy Canadian reality-TV investor angel of Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank fame, appears in a supporting role as the sadistic wealthy husband of a faded movie star played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Surrounded by an entourage of sycophants, he bribes Marty to throw a match to the reigning champion as part of a promotional event for his company.

As O’Leary expressed in Vanity Fair, Safdie was looking for an “asshole,” and he knows how to play that.

Drawing on his savage TV persona, and inviting comparison with
U.S. President Donald Trump’s own reality-TV stardom, O’Leary’s performance relies on the audience to do the heavy lifting of association. Canadian viewers may recall that O’Leary’s 2025 “asshole” moves include supporting Trump’s bid to make Canada the 51st state.

As a supporting actor who plays a pivotal plot role in Marty’s return to grace, O’Leary is hardly a cameoist. And yet, in his first acting role, O’Leary’s persona never fully disappears into the character of the cutthroat mid-century businessman.

Marty Supreme could be an episode of Dragon’s Den, with O’Leary sizing up another hopeful contestant for humiliation or a dream come true. The audience sketches out much of O’Leary’s performance from our own memories of similar viewing experiences, just like we do for other celebrities and movie stars.

Casting against type

After Kevin O’Leary’s appearance, the audience’s second cry of recognition at my local screen was for Marty’s mom: Fran Drescher, best known as the brash, colourful New Yorker from the 1990s sitcom The Nanny. During the filming of Marty Supreme, Drescher was the president of SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents screen actors in the U.S.

Spinning a familiar story of cameo happenstance and friendly connection that is as old as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s star-studded 1950s Road movies, Drescher told People that the union brought Safdie and Drescher together when he called her for regular updates during the 2023 actors’ strike.

Safdie’s cameos were to feature people with what Drescher called the right “background”: New Yorkers, many of them Jewish, with local accents. According to Drescher, Safdie intrigued her with a promise to showcase her depth demonstrated during calls explaining labour negotiations. Like Iyer, Drescher was cast in this cameo against the type of her superficial sitcom character.

Labour, cultural contexts also shape cameos

Many cameos of the 1920s and 1930s relied on labour conditions where stars and former stars signed to restrictive contracts could be pulled out of the studio canteen to appear as little more than extras.

This wasn’t because extras were in short supply: according to Kate Fortmueller, who has researched film and TV labour histories, almost three per cent of Los Angeles residents in the 1920s were registered as extras. The unionization of movie actors emerged from a desire to give order to the wannabe actors flooding Hollywood.

Comparable concerns were behind the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike — a key issue was compensation for actors as streaming media changed where audiences watch screens and convenient AI technology threatens real performers.

Marty Supreme commits to depicting the real New York through cameos that recreate the accents, dialects and unfiltered faces of famous New York actors, and these resonances beyond the screen are part of the film’s allure.

Joceline Andersen 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. Cameos in ‘Marty Supreme’ ask audiences to dig deeper – https://theconversation.com/cameos-in-marty-supreme-ask-audiences-to-dig-deeper-273762

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Alexandra R Harrington, Visiting Scholar, McGill University Faculty of Law, Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill University

The United States federal government recently revoked a landmark scientific ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency that stated greenhouse gases are a threat to public health. U.S. President Donald Trump said the ruling was a “disasterous” policy that “severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.”

The revocation is the latest move by a U.S. administration that has framed action to tackle climate change as hampering the U.S. economy. In this context, trade has become a buzzword over the past year. With the focus on tariffs, it is easy to overlook the impacts of U.S. trade policies on the environment and the organizations tasked with bridging the two.

My areas of research focus on international law, specifically environmental law and the intersections between trade and international organizations.

In January, Trump indicated that the U.S. will withdraw from the NAFTA/CUSMA-linked Commission on Environmental Cooperation and the process for dealing with claims that Canada, Mexico or the United States are shirking their environmental commitments — the submission on enforcement matters (SEM) process.

The U.S. withdrawal highlights the importance of these issues at the regional level. It also provides an opportunity for other countries in the Americas to take action on climate change without the United States.

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Read more:
Three ways Canada can navigate an increasingly erratic and belligerent United States

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What are SEMs?

In 1994, Canada, Mexico and the U.S. adopted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) along with two side agreements. One of these was the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), establishing the Commission on Environmental Cooperation and the SEM process.

When NAFTA was renegotiated in 2018, the SEM process was incorporated into the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and the NAAEC was replaced by the Agreement on Environmental Cooperation.

The Commission on Environmental Cooperation is charged with overseeing this agreement, while SEM is the process for dealing with claims that Canada, Mexico or the U.S. are not living up to their environmental commitments.

That process can lead to the creation of a “factual record”; an investigative report detailing the commission’s findings. Although not a legal decision, the factual record is a powerful evidentiary and fact-finding tool to generate reforms.

Reporting on derelict environmental commitments through the SEM process remains a vital tool. It has provided important factual records on leakage from Alberta tailings ponds and failures to protect species such as the loggerhead turtle, North Atlantic right whale and vaquita porpoise, among other issues.

The SEM model was replicated in U.S. trade agreements with Central American states, Colombia, Panama and Peru. In each of these agreements, however, the U.S. was exempted from SEM jurisdiction because it was already under the jurisdiction of CUSMA.

Given the U.S. decision not to provide the core funding needed for these entities to function, it would be possible for the Central American states, as well as Colombia, Panama and Peru, to enter into a separate agreement regarding SEMs. The same would be true for Canada and Mexico under CUSMA.

A new generation of environmental accountability

The U.S. was a driving influence in the creation of the SEM process. And the U.S. retreat could be accepted as a way to end systems that have brought significant issues in national enforcement of environment law to light.

Examples include the failure to properly monitor implementation of environmental laws and standards, ranging from those intended to protect communities living near pollution discharge points to those intended to protect species on the edge of extinction.

Other countries in the Americas now have an opportunity to create a larger environmental oversight mechanism. This would demonstrate their ability to step into the governance gap left by the U.S. and generate stronger regional alliances. This would not only benefit the Americas. It would also provide a model for other international organizations as they face the loss of a powerful member state.

This alternative would entail creating a new SEM process, along with an equivalent to the Commission on Environmental Cooperation to oversee it, linking all members of the impacted agreements and any other interested countries in the Americas. The most comprehensive way to do this would be to negotiate a new multilateral agreement similar to current regional agreements but without the emphasis being on trade.

Similar to the current SEM process, individuals and groups could make submissions claiming that a member state is failing to fulfill its environmental obligations. Once a submission is received, the SEM unit would determine whether it meets basic requirements. If so, the submission would move on and, ultimately, a factual record could be developed.

This alternative framework would demonstrate the collective commitment of countries across the Americas to environmental protection. It would reflect the reality that the Americas face significant shared environmental threats that are also increasingly threats to national security and economic interests.

Such an agreement could mainstream the SEM process, building on provisions established in NAFTA, NAAEC and CUSMA. Existing regional offices could be maintained to ensure strong connections on the ground, and the procedures used could largely be unchanged.

At a time when many countries seem to be focusing on narrow self-interest and military spending rather than the environment, this is a challenging proposition.

However, integrating the SEM process into a new, broader, collective effort would allow American countries to assert hemispheric leadership without having to reinvent the wheel. It would also allow citizens the continued ability to bring claims and to have some accountability.

As the U.S. government withdraws from its international obligations, reconceiving international organizations that are under existential threat is now a necessity. Reconfiguring SEMs throughout the Americas would serve as a model for other organizations and as a way of shifting international organizations to be less dependent on any one state.

Alexandra R Harrington 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. Countries in the Americas can act to protect the environment without the United States – https://theconversation.com/countries-in-the-americas-can-act-to-protect-the-environment-without-the-united-states-275994

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Muhammad Ilyas Nadeem, PhD Candidate in Obesity & Diabetes | Public Scholar (2024-2025), Concordia University

Canada is recognized globally for its world-leading obesity care guidelines — yet Canadians continue to struggle to access the very treatment plans we’ve developed. Meanwhile, the same model of care is now the one the World Health Organization (WHO) is urging other countries to adopt.

The WHO recently released its first ever guideline on anti-obesity medications, reinforcing a chronic disease model of care that Canadian experts have championed for years.

WHO’s stance mirrors the Canadian framework laid out in 2020 clinical guidelines: obesity is a chronic, relapsing disease that requires comprehensive, lifelong care — the kind that includes timely diagnosis, trained providers, co-ordination among the various health professionals involved, mental-health support, and — when appropriate — pharmacotherapy and bariatric surgery.

Despite Canada’s leadership in shaping this global shift, progress at home remains slow and uneven. More than one in four adults now live with obesity and wait times for specialist care have soared to a record high of 30 weeks in Canada. What’s more, in high-income countries, obesity and related chronic diseases tend to disproportionately affect people facing social and economic disadvantage.

When will Canadians see this research put into practice?

Either directly or indirectly, all Canadians are affected by obesity. Obesity remains largely framed as a willpower problem solvable through lifestyle change alone, despite decades of evidence showing it is a complex chronic disease shaped both by biology and environment. It is linked to more than 200 health problems worldwide and contributes to more than 3.7 million deaths annually.

Most health-care systems, including Canada’s, still rely on fragmented, weight-centric guidelines rather than holistic, chronic disease approaches. Even clinicians and clinics that want to follow these evidence-based models often find themselves constrained by limited resources, training, inconsistent insurance coverage and a system that still doesn’t put comprehensive obesity care at the forefront.

Canada has invested millions of dollars in obesity research, leading to the development of forward-thinking, science-backed approaches to obesity care, but system-wide implementation remains painfully slow.

The Canadian paradox: world-class guidance, patchy access

Here’s the bright side: Canada has quietly become an unexpected leader in global obesity care guidelines. Over the past five years, Canadian clinicians, researchers and people with lived experience have helped rewrite the international rulebook for treating obesity.

The 2020 adult guideline was a turning point that reframed obesity. It moved beyond using BMI as the main compass, and reorganized care around what matters to patients: quality of life, function and reduction of related complications, not just kilograms lost. That patient-centred, stigma-free model, along with Canada’s guideline process itself, has since been adapted in Ireland using the ADAPTE framework and in Chile through an international pilot. Several other nations are also integrating elements of the Canadian approach into their own guidelines.

In 2025, two major updates pushed the model further. A pediatric guideline in Canadian Medical Association Journal emphasized multicomponent, family-centred support that addresses mental health, quality of life and cardiometabolic risk, while considering medications or surgery for selected adolescents through shared decision-making.

An adult pharmacotherapy update called for long-term, individualized use of modern anti-obesity medicines — including semaglutide and tirzepatide — and urged clinicians to focus on abdominal obesity and complications rather than BMI alone.

Access to care

Yet a paradox remains: while the world begins to follow Canada’s lead on paper, most Canadians living with obesity still cannot access the level of care these very guidelines envision. Public coverage for anti-obesity medications remains limited and inconsistent across provinces, and private coverage reaches only a minority.

Training gaps compound these access issues. Medical education in Canada has historically overlooked obesity care, leaving many clinicians unprepared to treat patients in line with the guidelines.

Bariatric surgery capacity has been sharply constrained, with reported wait times varying from 1.5 years to nearly nine years, and historic analyses documenting stark interprovincial inequalities. These bottlenecks make it almost impossible to deliver the very guidelines we’ve poured time and funds into.

So far, policy signals are mixed. In March 2025, Alberta became the first — and still only — province to formally recognize obesity as a chronic disease, a move that can unlock more comprehensive coverage and care options. The federal government is reviewing applications for generic GLP-1 drugs which could improve access down the road. But no pan-Canadian policy framework exists, leaving most patients navigating a patchwork system.

In Québec, more bariatric surgeries have been performed relative to need than most provinces but waits remain substantial and public drug coverage for anti-obesity medicines is limited.

Improving the system

Ultimately, before we can improve the lives of our people, we need to improve the system that is supposed to care for them.

The first crucial step would be for more provinces to follow suit with Alberta to recognize obesity as a chronic disease nationwide. Recognition is the gateway to coverage and comprehensive care.

A co-ordinated federal-provincial-territorial framework implementing our guidelines on behavioural/psychological support, pharmacotherapy and surgery should be applied for obesity care in Canada. Make quality of life, mental health, functional capacity and obesity-related complication reduction core performance indicators.

Finally, similar to diabetes care, public and private plans should cover anti-obesity medications where clinically indicated. The absence of coverage continues to hinder access as international guidance embraces modern, chronic-care models for obesity management.

Canada’s impact on modern obesity care is commendable, with countries like Ireland and Chile adapting our model. WHO now supports this same chronic-care approach with its stance on GLP-1 medicines. But if Canada’s own guidelines are not practically applied within our health-care systems, many lives will continue to be at stake, and obesity numbers will continue to climb, as they have for the last several decades.

Muhammad Ilyas Nadeem receives funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ)-Santé.

Jessica Murphy has received funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ)-Santé.

Sylvia Santosa receives funding from CIHR, NSERC, MITACS, CFDR.

Cristina Sanza 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. Canada is a global leader in obesity care guidelines, so why are Canadians still waiting months for treatment at home? – https://theconversation.com/canada-is-a-global-leader-in-obesity-care-guidelines-so-why-are-canadians-still-waiting-months-for-treatment-at-home-273361

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Western University

The next major international sporting event, the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup hosted jointly by the United States, Canada and Mexico, is already garnering international scrutiny. There have been numerous calls to boycott it.

Calls for a boycott were amplified recently following U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland from Denmark, prompting soccer officials in Germany and France to broach the possibility of both countries boycotting the tournament.

Both countries’ soccer federations have pushed back against calls to boycott the World Cup for now, although recent events in Minneapolis have heightened concerns about the U.S.’ role in hosting the tournament and what that will mean for visitors.

Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter — who was suspended by FIFA in 2015 and replaced by current FIFA president Gianni Infantino amid a corruption scandal he was later acquitted of — recently voiced concerns over the marginalization of political opponents and violent crackdowns on immigration in the U.S.

The World Cup has historically been an event that brings together fans from across the world. Many fans rely on tourist visas, and ICE is expected to be responsible for security at the World Cup. ICE’s director has refused to commit to pausing the agency’s operations during the tournament.

Human rights groups have raised concerns over whether World Cup visitors will be detained and handed to ICE if they engage in actions deemed critical of the U.S. government.

Boycotts at international sporting events

In the history of international sporting events, boycotts have been far less common than bans.

Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were not invited to attend the 1920 Olympic games after losing the First World War.

South Africa was invited to the 1964 Tokyo Games but saw their invitation rescinded due to apartheid, and only rejoined Olympic competition in 1992. Rhodesia saw its invitation to the 1972 Games rescinded due to its government enacting a white supremacist regime.

Notably, both instances of rescinded invitations to the Olympic Games came after other African nations threatened to boycott the Games if South Africa and Rhodesia were invited to participate.

There were also partial boycotts at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Several nations announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics to protest China’s mistreatment of the Uyghur Muslims, prohibiting many government officials from attending in an official capacity, while still permitting athletes to compete. Russia has been banned from most major international sports competitions since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

However, the most famous boycott of an international sporting event occurred in 1980 ahead of the Summer Olympics in Moscow following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. More than 60 countries boycotted those Games, led by the U.S. In turn, 19 countries boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, led by the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries.

Yet there has never been a World Cup boycott by qualified teams on political grounds. In 1934, Uruguay famously chose not to travel to the second-ever World Cup in Italy because several European teams, including Italy, declined to travel to Uruguay for the inaugural tournament in 1930.

Prior to the 1966 World Cup, all African teams withdrew from qualifying in protest because FIFA had only allocated all of the teams from Africa, Asia and Oceania one combined place at the tournament. There were calls for Norway to boycott the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar, but they did not qualify for the tournament.

How likely is a boycott?

As of yet, no leaders of major soccer federations have endorsed calls for their country to boycott the tournament, despite pressure from some executives and politicians. It would likely take decisive action from a federation head, akin to the action President Jimmy Carter took prior to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, to arrive at a country boycotting.

Furthermore, given the relationship Trump has built up with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, the effect of a boycott, or any credible threats of one, on the United States’ immigration policy or hosting responsibilities would likely be rather limited, making a boycott an unpopular decision that may not achieve the desired goal of any boycotting nation.

Infantino attended Trump’s inauguration and controversially awarded Trump FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize. More recently, he signed an agreement with Trumps’ Board of Peace on behalf of FIFA.

Infantino was also a staunch defender of Qatar’s building practices in the face of heavy human rights criticism and was willing to change FIFA’s policies at the last minute to acquiesce to Qatar’s demands for limited alcohol sales during the 2022 Men’s World Cup.

Trump could still escalate geopolitical tensions enough to spark further boycott discussions. But for now, a boycott remains unlikely, and even credible threats would likely do little to shift Infantino and Trump from the status quo.

Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven 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. Calls for a boycott of the 2026 FIFA World Cup are growing, but how realistic is one? – https://theconversation.com/calls-for-a-boycott-of-the-2026-fifa-world-cup-are-growing-but-how-realistic-is-one-275785

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nadiya N. Ali, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Trent University

By any measure, 2025 is the year artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly shifted the way we work, interact with each other and engage with the world at large. It has also made undeniable the enduring reality of racism and the limits of fact-checking in an age of disinformation.

Thanks to algorithmic systems, narratives that tap into deep-seated fears and anxieties travel farther and faster than ever before. They circle the globe before fact-checkers can even flag a problematic post.

In the second half of the year, another technological disruption emerged with OpenAI’s Sora, a lifelike video-generation software. Nothing, seemingly, was immune, including politics.

Sora hit the political landscape with particular vigour during the longest federal government shutdown in United States history. The 43-day impasse generated significant pressure and public controversy, particularly around uncertainty and delays that could affect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Digital blackface and the policing of Black poverty

At the height of the anxiety over the effects of the shutdown on SNAP benefits, which serves roughly 42 million Americans, a slew of short videos of Black women accosting social service employees or unleashing their frustration on livestream audiences caught the attention of the online sphere.

The SNAP suspension was ultimately blocked by the courts. It was also quickly revealed that the circulating clips were AI-generated.

What is most striking about these videos is how deliberately the caricature of the “Black welfare queen” was staged. In one video, the speaker declares, “I need SNAP to buy an iPhone.” In another, “I only eat steak, I need my funds.” And in a clip with children in the background, the woman insists, “I need to do my nails.”

Each expression of illicit use of funds is a shorthand for the alleged irresponsibility and moral failing that has long been intertwined with the racist trope of the “Black welfare queen.” One X user aptly dubbed these videos nothing short of “digital blackface.”

In the words of Black feminist writers Moya Bailey and Trudy, these videos traffic in “misogynoir” — a term developed to capture the “ways anti-Blackness and misogyny combine to malign Black women.” Bailey and Trudy note that representations of Black women as undeserving, burdensome to the public purse and inherently fraudulent are entrenched rather than exceptional.

Even clips “clearly labeled with a Sora watermark nabbed nearly 500,000 views on TikTok alone,” journalist Joe Wilkins observed. Wilkins goes on to explain that even when viewers were told the clips were AI-generated, some insisted, [“But that is what is happening.” Some argued that even if the videos were technically “fake,” they still “highlight genuine SNAP…issues.”

These comments expose the limits of fact-checking as an antidote to disinformation, especially when dealing with charged tropes. Once a harmful framing is revived and thrust into the collective ether, Ctrl+Alt+Delete becomes ineffective.

What requires attention, then, is not only how we grapple with the new terrain of AI-driven disinformation, but that we critically ask why certain representations hold mass resonance.

Why do particular images and narratives travel so well?

From settled fraud case to viral spectacle

Another case of digital blackface that captured public attention centred on the Minnesota Somali “Black fraud alert” saga. While still rooted in the same anti-Blackness that animated the “Black welfare queen” caricatures, this incident included Islamophobia and rising anti-immigrant sentiments.

The case traced back to a 2022 COVID-era malpractice scheme, which already led to arrests and convictions had. The scheme was led by Aimee Marie Bock, a white woman, and involved a network of Minnesotans, many of whom happened to be of Somali descent.

In December of 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump resurrected the settled case, weaponizing it and tethering it to his longstanding disdain for “third-world countries” and people from “shithole countries.” This rhetoric also folded into his hostility toward political opponents Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

What followed was not a serious discussion of fraud or of policy safeguards. Instead, the episode reinvigorated debates about white nationalism, racialized citizenship and racial eugenics.

Trump’s call to deport Somalis through ICE, declaring “I don’t want them in our country,” made this logic explicit. That most Minnesota Somalis hold U.S. citizenship, consistent with the 84 per cent citizenship rate, did little to disrupt the racist story being circulated.

Soon after the president’s comments, AI amplified the content. An AI-generated video circulated widely, animating the “Somali pirate” trope. It depicted Black men, presumed to be Somali, as migrants plotting to steal from taxpayers. In it we hear: “We don’t need to be pirates anymore. I found a better way. Government-funded daycare. We must go to Minnesota.”

This reference to child care echoed back to a viral video produced by a right-wing commentator claiming to expose another chapter in the “Somali fraud scandal,” this time targeting Somali-run child-care centres. The video prompted a statewide investigation, which ultimately found that all but one of the named centres were operating normally, with no clear evidence of fraud.

The “Black welfare queen” trope and the “Somali pirate” frame may seem to name different crises and different subjects, yet both draw from the same anti-Black racial grammar. In each case, Blackness is rendered fraudulent, criminal and morally deficient, cast as both a personal failing and national burden.

Why these ideas travel even when they’re false

These instances of digital blackface succeeded because misogynoir and anti-Blackness remain readily available discursive resources. AI merely accelerates their movement. The refusal of audiences to course-correct when fact-checked underscores how intuitive and pre-assembled racist and xenophobic scripts already are.

In both the SNAP-themed misogynoiric videos and the AI-generated “Somali pirate” content, nuance and factual accuracy were beside the point. What is at work instead is a broader political project tied to racial capitalism’s eugenicist logics.

As Black radical scholar Cedric Robinson argues, racism is not incidental to capitalism but foundational to the inequalities it requires. Poverty is misdirected as evidence of personal and community failings rather than the result of massive structural inequity. And when attached to the racialized poor, especially when Black, Muslim and immigrant, this logic crystallizes into “common sense.”

What is at stake with AI-enabled digital blackface is not only the amplification of racism, but the architecture of political life. In this climate, sober analysis and nuance recede, displaced by the numbing anxiety that structures contemporary public discourse.

Nadiya N. Ali has received funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. How AI resurrects racist stereotypes and disinformation — and why fact-checking isn’t enough – https://theconversation.com/how-ai-resurrects-racist-stereotypes-and-disinformation-and-why-fact-checking-isnt-enough-270000