Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Rena Zito, Associate Professor of Sociology, Elon University

John Davidson, whose life inspired the award-winning biopic “I Swear,” involuntarily shouted a racial slur during Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo’s speech at the BAFTA film awards in London on Feb. 22, 2026. The moment went viral, and the ensuing backlash ignited public debate about Tourette syndrome and its most shocking symptom.

Davidson has been a familiar figure to British audiences since his teenage years, when he first appeared in a BBC documentary about Tourette syndrome. He has since devoted decades to public education about the condition, earning him a distinguished honor from Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.

The reactions to Davidson’s tics at the BAFTA awards make clear that Tourette syndrome remains a deeply misunderstood condition, especially when it comes to obscene language tics, called coprolalia.

I am a sociologist who studies the social dimensions of Tourette syndrome, including the stigma of coprolalia. I also live with Tourette syndrome. Most people with Tourette’s will never experience these taboo tics, but those who do bear the weight of society’s judgment.

What is Tourette syndrome?

Tourette syndrome is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects about 0.5% to 0.7% of the population. It is characterized by involuntary movements and sounds called tics that usually begin in childhood and, for some people, continue into adulthood.

Tics consist of movements, such as eye blinking or shoulder shrugging, or vocalizations, such as throat clearing or brief sounds. Some involve a single movement or sound, while others combine several movements or involve longer verbalizations – for example, finger snapping followed by a head jerk, or repeated words or phrases.

Coprolalia, or involuntary obscene or offensive speech, is one of the most widely misunderstood features of Tourette’s. About 10% to 20% of people with Tourette syndrome experience this type of tic.

Tics often change over time in intensity, frequency and form, with relatively quiet periods followed by phases when symptoms are more severe. Many people feel an unpleasant building sensation before a tic, called a premonitory urge, describing it like an itch that needs to be scratched. Others experience tics more suddenly, like an unexpected sneeze. Some can temporarily suppress their tics, often at the cost of greater discomfort later, while others are unable to suppress them.

Tics can be physically taxing, leading to acute and chronic pain and injury. People with Tourette syndrome also frequently face stigma, discrimination and the pressure to monitor or hide their tics, which can take a serious psychological toll. People with Tourette syndrome are at increased risk of self-harm and suicide.

The causes of Tourette syndrome aren’t fully understood, but it has a strong genetic component. Although it often runs in families, it can also be caused by birth complications or infections.

Understanding taboo tics like coprolalia

Even though a minority of people with Tourette syndrome experience coprolalia, media portrayals of Tourette’s disproportionately focus on outbursts of profanity. This “swearing disease” stereotype misrepresents how most people with the condition experience it. But because taboo tics are shocking and unexpected, they loom larger in the public imagination than more common, less dramatic tics.

Coprolalia is only one form of taboo tic. Others include copropraxia, or obscene gestures, and non-obscene but socially inappropriate tics, such as making kissing sounds, spitting or touching others.

One of the most confusing aspects of taboo tics is that they can be contextually relevant while also being involuntary. Consider, for example, the person who tics “I have a gun!” when stopped by law enforcement. Cues in the social environment can trigger tics, especially in moments of heightened stress.

Why profanity in particular? Tics arise from dysfunction in neural circuits involved in movement and impulse control. Taboo words are emotionally charged and socially significant, so they tend to be more strongly encoded in the brain’s language and emotional networks than neutral words. This helps explain why coprolalia can also occur, albeit rarely, in people with brain lesions, neurodegenerative conditions and seizure disorders.

The challenges of living with coprolalia

The social world can be precarious for people with Tourette syndrome who experience taboo tics like coprolalia. These tics are often associated with more severe symptoms overall, more co-occurring conditions and greater social difficulty.

My research on coprolalia stigma reveals the depths of distress public misconceptions can cause.

A common misconception is that tics reveal what people “really” think and feel. In reality, tics often compel people to say or do precisely what they most wish to avoid. The stakes are especially high when tics involve slurs or insults. As one interview participant told me, “It’s like my brain weaponizes my most polite intentions and turns them into the cruelest things. And it’s scary to go outside … to have this sudden confrontation mechanism inside of me that I absolutely do not want.”

These socially inappropriate tics can draw unwanted attention and lead to exclusion, bullying, hostile encounters and barriers to employment. As another participant put it, “There’s no jobs I can work where I can get the accommodation that it’s okay for me to cuss at my boss.”

Anticipating these reactions, many people with prominent coprolalia withdraw from public life or carry the burden of constant disclosure and education.

A second misconception is that coprolalia always looks like someone shouting obscenities in public. While that does happen for some people, like Davidson at the BAFTA awards, others can suppress, mask or carefully manage their tics in social settings. Both experiences of coprolalia are stressful. Like other tics, coprolalia can come and go over time.

The stress of taboo tics extends beyond the individual. Families frequently describe feeling helpless in the face of their child’s distress, unsupported by schools and judged by others when these tics occur.

People with Tourette syndrome, and especially those with taboo tics, need understanding and support to participate fully and safely in public life.

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

– ref. Taboo tics like shouting curses and slurs are uncommon in Tourette syndrome − but people who have them suffer harsh social stigma – https://theconversation.com/taboo-tics-like-shouting-curses-and-slurs-are-uncommon-in-tourette-syndrome-but-people-who-have-them-suffer-harsh-social-stigma-276721

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Geoffroy Laumet, Associate Profesor of Physiology and Neuroscience, Michigan State University

Pain is something most people experience after an injury, whether from a sprained ankle, surgery or car accident. Normally pain fades as the body heals. But it may last longer in women than in men, making women more likely to develop chronic pain.

For decades, differences in pain between men and women have often been attributed to psychological, emotional or social factors. Because of that, persistent pain in women is often overlooked in care.

However, my research team’s newly published study suggests that the immune system may play a role in why recovery from pain differs in men and women. Doctors have thought that the immune system increases pain by causing inflammation, which is often experienced as redness and swelling.

But recent work from my lab and others suggests that immune cells may also be critical to helping pain resolve, and differences in how these cells function between men and women may influence how quickly pain goes away.

Hormones and immune cells

I am a neuroimmunologist who studies how the nervous and immune systems communicate. My research team aims to understand why pain sometimes persists long after an injury has healed, eventually becoming chronic.

To study this process, we combined experiments in mice with data from people who had been involved in motor vehicle collisions. This type of injury is a common trigger for long-term musculoskeletal pain, making it an ideal situation to study how acute pain becomes chronic.

We focused on a specific molecule called interleukin-10 that helps reduce inflammation, measuring its levels in both mice after skin injury and in people in the emergency room after a motor vehicle accident. Surprisingly, we found that IL-10 doesn’t just calm inflammation. It also communicates directly to pain-sensing nerve cells to switch them off. In other words, IL-10 helps pain to go away.

We identified that IL-10 was mostly produced by a type of immune cell called monocytes that circulate in the blood and travel to injured tissues.

Across both mice and humans, we found that males tended to recover from pain more quickly than females. The reason appears to lie in how monocytes behave after injury. In males, these immune cells were more likely to produce IL-10, the molecule that helps resolve pain. In females, this response was less pronounced.

Importantly, we also found that testosterone influences how much IL-10 these immune cells produce. Higher levels of testosterone in males promoted higher production of IL-10 by monocytes.

This finding suggests that hormonal signals may shape the body’s ability to naturally turn off pain after injury.

Avenues for treatment

Our results point to a shift in how scientists think about pain: Rather than viewing the immune system only as a driver of pain, it may also be a key player in resolving it. Differences in immune cell function could explain why some people recover quicker from injury while others go on to develop chronic pain.

Understanding these biological pathways could eventually lead to new treatments. Instead of simply blocking pain signals, future therapies might aim to boost the body’s own pain resolution system. Helping immune cells calm down pain-sensing neurons more effectively could more quickly restore comfort after injury.

While more research is needed, these results highlight a promising new direction in the effort to prevent and treat chronic pain and better understand sex differences in pain.

Geoffroy Laumet receives funding from US NIH and DoD CPMRP. He is a member of the US Association for the Study of Pain.

– ref. Why does pain last longer for women? Immune cells may be the culprit – https://theconversation.com/why-does-pain-last-longer-for-women-immune-cells-may-be-the-culprit-276591

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Marc Zimmer, Professor of Chemistry, Connecticut College

Fruit flies, mice, zebra fish, yeast and the tiny worm C. elegans are model organisms that have carried modern biology on their backs.

Scientists did not choose them for their charisma. They were chosen because their similarities illuminate biological principles across many species. Their biology is simple enough for researchers to master yet deep enough to keep delivering new insights centuries later.

But biologists don’t have a common reference point for a vast area of the field: proteins, the cell’s doers. Proteins catalyze chemical reactions, give cells their structure and help them communicate with each other. Most organisms use tens of thousands of protein types, and each can be mutated, modified and measured in different ways and in countless environments. Thanks in part to artificial intelligence, researchers are also generating new proteins faster than they can study them.

Without a shared reference point, study results are hard to compare. Two labs can study the same protein under different experimental conditions and end up with findings that do not line up. The result is a scientific literature full of isolated findings that are sometimes duplicated and difficult to generalize.

As a computational chemist who studies fluorescent proteins, I argue that labs also need a set of model proteins. Like how fruit flies and mice anchor whole fields, model proteins can help researchers build on each other’s findings and better understand the fundamentals of biology.

Green fluorescent protein as a model

If model proteins are to be yardsticks, the best place to start is with proteins researchers already reach for when they need a reliable standard. Green fluorescent protein is at the top of that list.

Green fluorescent protein, first isolated from a jellyfish, glows bright green when under a blue light. Biologists fuse green fluorescent protein to other proteins to track where the proteins go and when they are made.

Green fluorescent protein is already a de facto reference point for the field, used as a practice protein in experiments before attempting bigger goals. In the early 2000s, researchers used the protein and a yellow version in cloned pigs to show that foreign genes could be added to large mammals and reliably work. Green fluorescent protein made it obvious that the new gene was successfully incorporated because researchers could literally see that the pigs’ cells were making the protein encoded by the fluorescence genes.

The long-term aim of these experiments was to engineer pigs to produce specific human proteins that help the immune system accept a pig organ rather than reject it. Green fluorescent protein helped show that the basic engineering of this idea could work, which eventually led to the first pig-to-human kidney transplants.

The use of green fluorescent protein is not the endpoint of most studies but the proof step. It allows researchers to say, yes, the new gene is there, the cell is making the protein, the protein is working and will probably work with other proteins.

AI is forcing benchmarks

When researchers are hunting for new proteins to use as enzymes, treatments or materials, protein language models and other generative AI methods can propose huge numbers of plausible protein sequences for them to test. While some AI-designed proteins do work in the lab and can help reduce trial and error, many candidate proteins fail.

Fluorescent proteins can be a useful stress test for protein language models. The hardest part of using AI to generate proteins is proving that the sequences it suggests can become a properly folded, working protein.

Green fluorescent protein makes that proof straightforward because fluorescence allows you to quickly see that the protein has folded correctly. You can predict the brightness, stability or color of fluorescent proteins, then directly check whether the AI-generated protein matches. Like a mouse study that hints a drug might work in humans, green fluorescent protein doesn’t guarantee an AI model will succeed on every protein, but it’s a quick, widely trusted sign that the design pipeline is doing something right.

Calling green fluorescent protein a model protein would also improve how biology is taught. Like classic model organisms, green fluorescent protein is safe and visual. It is also forgiving, producing a clear, fluorescent signal even when student study designs aren’t perfect.

These traits make it an educational gateway to ideas such as gene expression, protein folding and bioengineering. It can turn an abstract concept into something you can see in a test tube or under a microscope.

Model organisms work because scientific communities agreed to build around common reference points. I believe protein science is now vast enough to need the same, and naming green fluorescent protein as a model protein could make it easier to connect discoveries, teach students and assess new tools.

The glow, in other words, can still guide scientists – not just by dazzling, but by helping the whole field add up.

Marc Zimmer received funding from NIH to research fluorescent proteins.

– ref. 1 protein to rule them all – why crowning the protein that makes jellyfish glow green as a model can help scientists streamline biology – https://theconversation.com/1-protein-to-rule-them-all-why-crowning-the-protein-that-makes-jellyfish-glow-green-as-a-model-can-help-scientists-streamline-biology-274385

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mayank Kejriwal, Research Assistant Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Southern California

When a human says an event is “probable” or “likely,” people generally have a shared, if fuzzy, understanding of what that means. But when an AI chatbot like ChatGPT uses the same word, it’s not assessing the odds the way we do, my colleagues and I found.

We recently published a study in the journal NPJ Complexity that suggests that, while large language model AIs excel at conversation, they often fail to align with humans when communicating uncertainty. The research focused on words of estimative probability, which include terms like “maybe,” “probably” and “almost certain.”

By comparing how AI models and humans map these words to numerical percentages, we uncovered significant gaps between humans and large language models. While the models do tend to agree with humans on extremes like “impossible,” they diverge sharply on hedge words like “maybe.” For example, a model might use the word “likely” to represent an 80% probability, while a human reader assumes it means closer to 65%.

This could be because humans can interpret words such as “likely” and “probable” based more on contextual cues and personal experiences. In contrast, large language models may be averaging over conflicting usages of those words in their training data, leading to divergences with human interpretations.

Our study also found that large language models are sensitive to gendered language and the specific language used for prompting. When a prompt changed from “he” to “she,” the AI’s probability estimates often became more rigid, reflecting biases embedded in its training data. When a prompt changed from English to Chinese, the AI’s probability estimates often shifted, possibly due to differences between English and Chinese in how people express and understand uncertainty.

Why it matters

Far from being a linguistic quirk, this misalignment is a fundamental challenge for AI safety and human-AI interaction. As large language models are increasingly used in high-stakes fields like health care, government policy and scientific reporting, the way they communicate risk becomes a matter of public trust.

If an AI assistant helping a doctor, for instance, describes a side effect as “unlikely,” but the model’s internal calculation of “unlikely” is much higher than the doctor’s interpretation, the resulting decision could be flawed.

What other research is being done

Scientists have studied how humans quantify uncertainty since the 1960s, a field pioneered by CIA analysts to improve intelligence reporting. More recently, there has been an explosion in large language model literature seeking to look under the hood of neural networks to better understand their “behaviors” and linguistic patterns.

Our study adds a layer of complexity by treating the interaction between humans and artificial intelligence as a biological-like system where meaning can degrade. It moves beyond simply measuring if an AI is “smart” and instead asks if it is aligned.

Other researchers are currently exploring whether so-called chain-of-thought prompting – asking the AI to show its work – can fix these errors. However, our study found that even advanced reasoning doesn’t always bridge the gap between statistical data and verbal labels.

What’s next

A goal for future AI development is to create models that don’t just predict the next likely word but actually understand the weight of the uncertainty they are conveying. Researchers are calling for more robust consistency metrics to ensure that if a model sees a 10% chance in the data, it chooses the same word every time.

As we move toward a world where AI summarizes scientific papers and manages people’s schedules, making sure that “probably” means “probably” is a vital step in making these systems reliable partners rather than just sophisticated parrots.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Mayank Kejriwal receives funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institutes of Health.

– ref. ‘Probably’ doesn’t mean the same thing to your AI as it does to you – https://theconversation.com/probably-doesnt-mean-the-same-thing-to-your-ai-as-it-does-to-you-275626

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stephanie Lessing, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy, UMass Boston

Amid growing demands by Democrats to overhaul U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal immigration officials killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in early February 2026 that agents in Minneapolis will be issued body-worn cameras.

But can body cameras on federal officials provide the transparency and accountability the public is demanding from agents with ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection?

As a public policy scholar, I have analyzed the existing body-worn camera policy for ICE agents. And I’ve compared this policy to dozens of other state and local body camera policies, in an effort to investigate the rationales for their use.

Whether ICE’s body camera policy can provide transparency and accountability depends, I believe, on the policy itself and the enforcement of that policy. ICE’s use of body cameras could improve the agency’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

But as I’ve seen with other police body camera policies, there’s a risk that camera footage may obscure actual events. It’s also possible that the strategic release of footage may undermine transparency.

Various body camera policies

Police body cameras were first used in the United States in 2012 by the Rialto Police Department in California. By 2020, their use had expanded to over 62% of local law enforcement agencies, covering 79% of local police officers nationwide.

That expansion was, in part, a response to growing criticism over stop-and-frisk tactics – in which police temporarily detain people for weapons searches when a crime is suspected – and police-involved shootings of people of color.

Body camera policies vary greatly between municipalities. Some policies make body cameras useful accountability tools, like those of Parker, Colorado, which uses cameras for evidence collection and ensuring officer adherence to policy rather than as surveillance technology.

Others, meanwhile, provide broad discretion for officers to choose when to activate their body cameras, such as Colorado Springs’ policy. Allowing officers to decide when to use their cameras can limit the availability of evidence.

I believe there are four crucial elements of a body camera policy that can ensure that ICE agents properly use the technology.

Activation requirements

Body camera quality has improved over the past decade. But the battery life of many models prevents continuous recording throughout a 10-hour shift.

Instead, law enforcement officials often manually activate their body cameras. Thus, to effectively promote accountability, a strong policy would require ICE agents to activate their body cameras before they interact with the public.

A 2016 study found that, without mandatory camera-activation policies, officers often fail to activate their cameras.

The current ICE body-worn camera policy, issued in February 2025, lists enforcement activities that require recording. They include executing arrest warrants, frisks of individuals and “responding to public, unlawful/violent disturbances at ICE facilities.”

But the list does not include mandatory activation during vehicle pursuits or the transportation of people to detention facilities. Recording inside detention facilities is strictly prohibited by the policy.

Deactivation requirements

As proposed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit that promotes policing professionalism, body cameras must continue to record until an encounter with a member of the public has concluded and agents have left the scene.

The current ICE body-worn camera policy states that agents “should only deactivate the BWC when the scene is secure as determined by the supervisor or team leader.”

While robust policies, such as that of the Chicago Police Department, require continued recording during the transportation of detained people, the ICE body camera policy does not. This creates the potential for critical moments to go unrecorded.

Facial recognition

Many body camera models come equipped with facial recognition technology. But many local police department policies prohibit its use due to privacy and surveillance concerns.

ICE uses facial recognition technology during immigration enforcement operations, but in 2020 lawmakers raised concerns that body camera facial recognition could dissuade citizens from protesting out of fear of retribution.

As protests against ICE immigration enforcement continue, it’s known that the agency uses facial recognition technology on peaceful protesters and observers. Existing ICE policy prevents the use of facial recognition on “live BWC recordings,” meaning while the interaction is taking place. Facial recognition is permitted on body camera footage after the interaction has concluded.

In early February 2026, Democratic lawmakers introduced a measure that would prohibit the use of facial recognition by ICE and CBP agents. That ban would extend to facial recognition features on body cameras.

Policy compliance

Policy is only as strong as its enforcement.

Policymakers could consider strengthening submission forms for ICE use-of-force and civil rights violation complaints.

Thorough investigation of complaints and reviews of body camera footage could be handled by an external review board. The Office of the Inspector General, responsible for investigating allegations of excessive force by ICE agents, could also conduct reviews.

Body cameras will not deter violence committed by ICE agents unless policies clearly dictate their use. For body cameras to function as transparency and accountability tools, I believe wrongdoing would have to be swiftly and consistently penalized. This would highlight the consequences of noncompliance with body-worn camera policies.

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

– ref. Why ICE’s body camera policies make the videos unlikely to improve accountability and transparency – https://theconversation.com/why-ices-body-camera-policies-make-the-videos-unlikely-to-improve-accountability-and-transparency-275302

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John J. Martin, Assistant Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University

In 2024, spending on federal elections totaled almost US$15 billion in the United States. The United Kingdom, in contrast, spent approximately $129 million on its 2024 parliamentary elections – less than 1% of 2024 U.S. spending – despite having a population one-fifth the size of the U.S.

Indeed, most other democratic countries spend only a fraction of what the U.S. does on their respective elections.

Why do U.S. elections cost so much?

Many people may attribute the blame to Citizens United v. FEC, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down corporate spending limits in elections.

Yet the source runs much deeper, to a case that marked its 50th anniversary in early 2026: Buckley v. Valeo, a landmark case that established the modern framework for U.S. campaign finance regulation.

Big money’s political influence

For most of U.S. history, political spending was an unregulated practice. In turn, big-moneyed interests wielded major influence over elections without any legal impediments.

In the early 20th century, however, Congress began implementing small measures to rein in unfettered campaign finance. In 1907, for instance, Congress passed the Tillman Act, which banned corporations from donating directly to candidates. By 1971, Congress had implemented the modern Federal Election Campaign Act, or FECA, which initially just included disclosure and disclaimer requirements for candidates.

Nevertheless, following the Watergate scandal – which included bags of cash and campaign dirty tricks – Congress enacted the more comprehensive 1974 FECA Amendments to more effectively restrain big money in American politics.

The FECA Amendments instituted, among other things, dollar limits on the amount of money individuals and political committees could contribute to federal candidates. Similarly, it limited the amount of money individuals could independently expend to support the election or defeat of a federal candidate.

Almost immediately, a number of politicians and other parties filed suit – including U.S. Sen. James Buckley, a New York conservative; former U.S. senator and 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat; and the New York Civil Liberties Union – to challenge the amendments’ constitutionality.

They argued that the new laws restricted First Amendment freedoms of political speech and expression. Their argument was straightforward: If I can’t spend as much as I want to support a candidate, I am unable to fully express my political views. The lawsuit ultimately ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Jan. 30, 1976, the Supreme Court issued its opinion. One of the lengthiest in U.S. history – 294 pages in total – the opinion took an axe to the FECA and effectively reduced federal campaign finance law to a patchwork of laws and rules resembling regulatory Swiss cheese.

In doing so, the court laid the groundwork for the development of the modern campaign finance system in the U.S.

Money is speech

What did Buckley v. Valeo do?

For one, the court declared that limits on political contributions and expenditures, in fact, affect First Amendment interests. The court found limits on contributions to indirectly impact donors’ right of expression, the idea being that a contribution to a candidate acts as an expression of support for them.

Contribution limits can furthermore directly infringe on candidates’ speech rights if they are so low as to prevent the candidate from effectively campaigning, the court decided.

The court, meanwhile, found limits on political expenditures, such as spending money on a TV ad, to impose an even more direct constraint on speech rights. In the court’s words, such limits reduce “the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.” With this, the court embraced what its critics have dubbed the “money is speech” principle.

So whenever a law constrains political speech, the government must justify it via a “compelling” state interest. Thus came the court’s second major move via the Buckley decision: narrowly defining the government’s interest in regulating money in politics.

Specifically, the court recognized only one compelling state interest in restricting political spending: preventing quid pro quo corruption – the exchange of money for political favors. With this, the court outright rejected that the government had a serious, broader interest in promoting political equality, one of the driving forces behind the passage of the 1974 FECA Amendments.

Applying this framework, the court upheld federal limits on contributions to candidates because directly giving money to politicians carries a risk of quid pro quo.

In contrast, the court invalidated FECA’s limits on independently made political expenditures – expenditures made on a candidate’s behalf but not in coordination with the candidate. In the court’s view, if somebody spends money to support a candidate without coordinating with that candidate, no corruption concern exists – an assumption that remains widely disputed. Thus, Congress had no compelling interest to limit political advocacy via expenditures.

Unlimited sums

While a product of 1970s lawmaking, the Buckley decision has played a major role in shaping modern U.S. politics. Its impact on how lawmakers can – and cannot – regulate money in politics endures today.

The most pronounced effect of Buckley has been the proliferation of spending by outside groups making those independent expenditures.

Buckley’s invalidation of independent-expenditure limits applied only to limits on individuals. But the Supreme Court has since extended Buckley’s logic to spending by organizations. In Citizens United in 2010, the court held that the government had no compelling interest in limiting independent expenditures made by entities such as corporations, unions or political action committees – PACs – that do not coordinate with candidates, known today as super PACs.

Shortly following the Citizens United decision, a federal appellate court applied Citizens United to strike down limits on contributions to super PACs, the idea being they could not engage in corruption if they were not coordinating with candidates.

Donors were now free to give unlimited sums of money to super PACs, which were free to spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections. Each passing election since then has seen untold super PAC spending, peaking at over $2.6 billion in 2024.

Enter dark money

Super PACs are only one part of the modern political landscape, though.

Following Citizens United, donors realized that if they were to donate money to a super PAC, federal law would mandate the disclosure of that donation. Yet, federal law contained a loophole: shell companies – companies formed purely to preserve the anonymity of their makers – and 501(c)(4) nonprofits could donate money to super PACs without having to disclose who their money came from. Collectively, these became known as “dark money” groups.

Wealthy donors thus started giving money to these dark money groups as a vehicle to fund super PACs without detection. These groups have become a major force in election spending, accounting for an estimated $1.9 billion in 2024.

The Buckley decision has also led to the proliferation of self-funded candidates. The Supreme Court held that the government cannot limit self-funding because the risk of quid pro quo is nonexistent – again, a disputed assumption.

U.S. campaigns now feature multimillionaires and billionaires propelling themselves into electoral contention each election cycle simply by virtue of having a well-funded bank account. In 2024, 65 federal candidates spent at least $1 million of their own dollars on their campaign.

Small limits, big spending

One area that still remains open to regulation post-Buckley is contributions to candidates, political parties or PACs.

Thus, contribution limits exist federally and in most states in some form.

Still, the government’s authority to cap contributions is not infinite. The Supreme Court has occasionally struck down certain states’ limits when they are deemed “too low.”

The court, moreover, invalidated in 2014 an aggregate limit on the amount a donor could contribute overall to candidates per election, reasoning that Buckley’s anti-corruption rationale could apply only to direct, one-to-one exchanges. Wealthy donors were thus free to donate to hundreds of candidates in an election cycle.

In 2025, the court heard a challenge to a federal law limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with their nominees. Intended to prevent individuals from using parties as a means of circumventing individual-to-candidate contribution limits, the law has been on shaky ground for decades.

The court will issue a ruling on that challenge in the coming months. Whether the law is upheld or struck down, Buckley is guaranteed to play a major role in the decision.

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

– ref. 50 years ago, the Supreme Court broke campaign finance regulation – https://theconversation.com/50-years-ago-the-supreme-court-broke-campaign-finance-regulation-274939

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Claire Oberon Garcia, Professor of English, Colorado College

For the past eight years, the Colorado Springs City Council has issued proclamations and recognitions paying homage to the achievements of its African American citizens.

In 2005, the Colorado Springs City Council and Mayor Yemi Mobolade jointly issued a Black History Month proclamation.

This year, the mayor’s office issued its own statement alluding to Mobolade’s identity as the city’s first Black and first immigrant mayor. It also praises the positive effects of past and present African American achievement in Colorado Springs.

The City Council was slower to act, finally succumbing to pressure to approve their own proclamation two weeks later.

Why did a routine symbolic gesture — one performed by public and private institutions across the nation — become questionable in Colorado Springs?

I’m a Black Studies scholar. I’ve been personally and professionally affected over the years by the changing attitudes and policies surrounding the preservation and sharing of African American history.

Currently, I serve on the State Historian’s Council with History Colorado. I also sit on the Black Coloradan Racial Equity Study Committee, which oversees research required by SB-24-053. This bill seeks to examine how state and local policies in areas such as education, health, housing, the criminal justice system and business have affected Black Coloradans past and present.

I wondered if this local controversy was symptomatic of recent pressure from the current White House administration to erase, misrepresent or repurpose the experiences of Black Americans. What I found behind the controversy is more complicated.

The Colorado Springs City Council controversy

The controversy was sparked when City Councilman Dave Donelson walked out of the City Council meeting. He did so after several local faith leaders made critical comments about Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions across the country on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Rev. Josh Rumple, who leads the First Congregational Church in Colorado Springs, was one of the speakers. He said King’s messages have been whitewashed over time to appease people who disagree with him, according to public radio station KRCC.

Donelson refused to participate in the rest of the proclamation program because he was “offended” by criticism of ICE. “I find what was said here offensive” he said.

Angela Stevens, president of the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, was angry that the proclamation could not get enough support at that meeting.

“We see you as a body playing it safe,” she said. She added that the inaction of City Council was part of a “national pattern of de-emphasizing Black history.”

Rev. Candace Woods organized the anti-ICE comments at the meeting. She saw the comments as consistent with King’s values and constitutional issues regarding civil rights. “I don’t know how you cannot see the connections,” she said. “Dr. King called us to stand up for our neighbors in the face of incorrect, immoral laws.”

Local opinion columnist Rachel Stovall regarded the protest as “hijacking” a “special moment.” She believes that the protest drew attention away from Black history.

She claims: “There is a difference between principled protest that seeks to highlight injustice and disruptive antics that undermine the very institutions meant to serve the community. The line between the two is always clear.” However, the tactics of the civil rights protests of the 1960s often received the same criticism.

For me, this local controversy highlights a central question: What is the meaning of Black history to broader communities? What good is sharing knowledge about what African Americans have accomplished against the odds?

Colorado’s Black history

Living in a state where Black people have been a small minority with only a few concentrations in a handful of cities and towns, Black history at first glance may seem a simple acknowledgment of barrier-breakers and proof that democratic values — though won with much suffering and blood — can ultimately come to fruition.

Taking the time to learn more about the different perspectives expressed by this seemingly simple action by Colorado Springs City Council reminded me to think about the history of Black Coloradans with more nuance.

This year, as the United States marks its 250th birthday, Colorado is marking 150 years as the “Centennial State.”

The Centennial State’s birthday programming and activities, such as the America 250 – Colorado 150 Commission, offer an opportunity to examine how Colorado’s Black history relates to other debates about freedom, harm, rights and social justice.

One of the commission’s goals for Colorado’s birthday year is to create and share a more inclusive history of the state through the Heritage for All program. The program will add 150 new historic signs and markers representing the histories of usually underrepresented groups.

Phillip Gover III of History Colorado took on legislatively mandated work to research and assess the harm done by Indian boarding schools in Colorado. He has asserted that the most fundamental question of the project is to clarify “who owns the story” of minority communities’ oppression and resistance.

A story about all of us

Knowledge must be centered on the affected groups’ experiences, perspectives and histories, but these are shaped by and entangled with larger stories and conflicting perspectives. Ultimately, these stories are about all of us, not just the oppressed groups.

Colorado’s own Black history is full of examples of the influence of Black Coloradans in making the state what it is today in ways that are more interesting than simple narratives of oppression and triumph. The stories are as individual as the people and the Colorado communities that experienced them.

Consider the case of Black frontiersman John Taylor, who was dubbed “the first white man in Pine River Valley.” A formerly enslaved man who served in the Union Army, Taylor settled in the Ute Borderlands, which is where he married an Indigenous woman. According to the scholar Louis Gregory McAllister, in this area of southern Colorado at the time, the only racial categories were “white” or “Indian,” so Taylor was accepted and treated as white by both communities.

The Buffalo Soldiers were among the first African Americans to have their stories included in Colorado history. They have been honored as heroes for their military service at Fort Garland and as proof of Black presence in the familiar mythologizing of Western expansion. Established in 1866, they were commissioned to patrol federal lands.

Recent scholarship has complicated the heroic picture, showing how they were underpaid and mistreated by the army they served. They themselves played a troubling role in the suppression and inhumane treatment of Colorado’s Native peoples.

An anniversary reckoning

So what does Black Colorado history have to say to all Coloradans – and the nation?

Increasing our knowledge of Colorado’s Black history involves confronting complicated truths, dismantling easy binaries between the oppressors and the oppressed, and understanding how the experiences and suffering of particular communities are meaningful to us all.

Coloradans can celebrate hard-won achievements and contributions to the betterment of Colorado society, but we must also acknowledge and commemorate the inhumane, shameful and ambiguous parts of our shared stories.

Is Black Colorado history useful for recognizing and addressing current injustices and what some see as similar moral dilemmas? Or is the recognition of Black History Month more appropriately seen as a “thank you” card from institutions and organizations?

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

– ref. Honoring Colorado’s Black History requires taking the time to tell stories that make us think twice – https://theconversation.com/honoring-colorados-black-history-requires-taking-the-time-to-tell-stories-that-make-us-think-twice-273686

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Aniko Bodroghkozy, Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia

Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two white Minneapolis residents killed in January 2026 by federal agents while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policy, have become household names. National media outlets continue to focus on their deaths and the circumstances around them.

Neither of them was the first person to be shot and killed by immigration enforcement officials over the past year. There have been numerous shootings and some deaths.

In September 2025, Silverio Villegas González was killed in Chicago under circumstances similar to Good’s death. Ruben Ray Martinez was shot multiple times by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas in March 2025, but their involvement was not revealed until nearly a year later. Neither Martinez nor Villegas González has become a household name, and their deadly encounters with federal agents have not drawn nearly the same level of media attention as Good’s or Pretti’s.

As a media historian, I’ve been struck by the similarities between the media’s coverage of Minneapolis and its coverage of Selma, Alabama, in 1965, when voting rights protests led to violence that left three people dead, including two white victims.

I’ve written about the Selma campaign, as well as the media’s treatment of white female activists killed during racial justice protests, in my books “Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement” and “Making #Charlottesville: Media from Civil Rights to Unite the Right.”

These two events reveal that the deaths of white activists often draw and sustain far more attention than the deaths of Black or Latino people in similar contexts. But the Selma and Minneapolis events also show that male and female white activist victims aren’t necessarily treated the same way.

Remembering Selma

Video footage of law enforcement beating and gassing marchers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge remains an iconic visual document of the Civil Rights Movement. John Lewis, who later became a congressman, was an activist at the head of the march on March 7, 1965, and was beaten in the head at the base of the bridge by Alabama state troopers. But he was not a household name in 1965, and media coverage at the time did not identify him.

Reporters also didn’t pay much attention to what had motivated the march: the killing of Black voting rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper during a nighttime march a week earlier.

Still, the prime-time television broadcast of footage from “Bloody Sunday” at the Pettus Bridge shocked Americans, just as footage from Minneapolis has similarly distressed and disturbed many people today.

In 1965, a small number of white Americans from around the country, including numerous members of the clergy, descended on Selma to stand with the brutalized voting rights activists. They included James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Massachusetts, and Viola Liuzzo, a wife and mother of five from Michigan.

Reeb, following a second aborted march across the Pettus Bridge two days after Bloody Sunday, was viciously beaten by a group of white racists and left lying on the ground, mortally wounded. His beating and subsequent death received plentiful media attention.

President Lyndon B. Johnson contacted Reeb’s widow. She gave media interviews about her husband. Johnson also extolled Reeb at the beginning of his joint address to Congress calling for robust voting rights legislation, four days after Reeb’s death. Johnson never mentioned Jackson’s death.

Liuzzo was ferrying people back to Selma from Montgomery on March 25 after the conclusion of the final, successful march to the state capital when a carload of Ku Klux Klansmen, one an FBI informant, chased her down and shot her through her car window. Her death received even more coverage than Reeb’s, keeping Selma in the news.

The Voting Rights Act passed five months later.

Smearing the victim

So how does coverage of Reeb and Liuzzo echo the portrayals of Pretti and Good? And why does it matter?

Initial media treatment of Liuzzo focused on her status as a wife and mother. She was characterized as brave, putting the rights of others above her own. “Mrs. Liuzzo ‘Felt She Had to Help,’” was the headline of a New York Times profile.

Good’s status as a devoted mother and wife also characterized initial media reporting following her death. This kind of framing can often shield “nice white ladies,” as scholar Jessie Daniels has termed them, from the derogatory treatment that women of color have often endured in the public arena.

But in both cases, although separated by six decades, condemnation, disparagement and misogyny soon followed. Government officials, commentators and far-right forces framed these women and their activism in darker terms. Liuzzo was smeared by a KKK grand wizard who blamed her for her own death, saying, “If this woman was at home with her children where she belonged she wouldn’t have been in any jeopardy.” Liuzzo was falsely accused of having sexual relations with a Black man, thereby being characterized as a traitor to the white race.

This kind of racist vitriol might have stayed on the fringes, but FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover amplified the stories, while a Detroit police officer’s file on Liuzzo, which included highly personal information and speculation about her mental health, was shared with segregationist Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma.

The material ended up in The New York Times, and Liuzzo’s posthumous reputation was marred. When Ladies’ Home Journal polled its readers about Liuzzo, 55% responded that she should have stayed home with her children.

Echoes of the past

Official government and law enforcement responses to Good’s death echo the Liuzzo case; in fact, the responses have arguably been magnified. Vice President JD Vance blamed Good for her own death, claiming it was a “tragedy of her own making.” President Donald Trump characterized her as “disorderly” and vicious. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials labeled Good a domestic terrorist.

This attempt to influence the media’s framing of Renee Good clearly had an impact, since much of the early media coverage focused on questions about her actions and motives, with the New York Post derisively labeling her an “‘ICE Watch’ ‘warrior’ who trained to resist feds before shooting,” before attention shifted to Pretti’s killing.

Good, like Liuzzo, was also derided as a race traitor, somehow betraying white Americans by supporting nonwhites. Podcaster Matt Walsh disparaged her for giving her life “to protect 68 IQ Somali scammers,” a smear that made its way into mainstream media, including its appearance in an opinion piece by The New York Times’ columnist David French that criticized inflammatory MAGA rhetoric.

Walsh and other right-wing commentators, along with comedian Ben Bankas, underscored Good’s sexuality to further demean her.

It’s different for men

Men have been treated differently in both press coverage and political response. Reeb, a father of four, never faced the level of condemnation heaped on Liuzzo. Southern white segregationists certainly questioned the motives of the many clergy members who descended on Selma. Those sentiments, however, did not circulate much outside of segregationist press. Reeb’s status as a minister, along with being a white man, may have shielded his reputation.

Here’s where there are some similarities to the response to Pretti’s death. Initially, Trump administration officials brought out the same playbook they’d used with Good. Noem and Stephen Miller, the White House homeland security adviser, called Pretti a domestic terrorist. Greg Bovino, the leader of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, along with a Homeland Security spokeswoman, claimed Pretti intended to “massacre law enforcement.”

Such charges quickly unraveled as media outlets questioned them. It helped that the video footage of Pretti’s killing was clearer than that of Good’s.

Like Good, Pretti became the target of vitriol in far-right media platforms. But little of that has gotten much purchase in mainstream media, just as the segregationist contempt for activist clergy members in Selma was not amplified.

Pretti’s status as a licensed gun owner who was exercising his Second Amendment right to bear arms, as well as his First Amendment rights to protest, may also have assisted his posthumous reputation. Right-wing critics who condemned a lesbian who was not adhering to a set of standards regarding femininity had a much harder time condemning a man licensed to carry a gun.

Liuzzo, Reeb, Good and Pretti all put their bodies on the line and made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of vulnerable nonwhite people. Liuzzo and Good suffered significant character assassination that their male partners-in-protest avoided.

Whiteness may help bring massive media attention, but being a dead white woman doesn’t necessarily bring respectful treatment. For some, especially those who put their bodies on the line for nonwhite communities, they are just “AWFL,” the current right-wing acronym for “affluent, white, liberal women” who step out of bounds.

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

– ref. When civil rights protesters are killed, some deaths – generally those of white people – resonate more – https://theconversation.com/when-civil-rights-protesters-are-killed-some-deaths-generally-those-of-white-people-resonate-more-273336

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Mike Shriberg, Professor of Practice & Engagement, School for Environment & Sustainability; Director of the University of Michigan Water Center, University of Michigan

What began as a straightforward question from one water-quality advocate has morphed into a high-stakes battle over an oil pipeline at the highest levels of the U.S. government – with implications that go far beyond the fate of a technical legal conflict.

The question arose after a 2010 Enbridge Energy oil spill in Michigan. The advocate asked what other Michigan waterways were at risk from crude oil spills. But in the wake of, among other issues, two ships doing damage to an underwater section of another Enbridge oil pipeline, the conflict has now come all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Feb. 24, 2026, the justices will hear oral arguments and thereafter deliberate about the future of Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 oil pipeline, which runs through Michigan and Wisconsin.

As a water policy scholar with a focus on the Great Lakes, I have participated directly in the Line 5 debate as a gubernatorial appointee to an advisory board, as well as analyzed its implications. I see this moment in the Supreme Court as one layer of a complex debate that Line 5 has stirred up about states’ rights, Indigenous rights and the future of the fossil fuel economy.

Enbridge Energy vs. Dana Nessel

The actual issue in front of the Supreme Court is procedural: In 2019, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sued Enbridge in a Michigan state court, seeking to shut down the pipeline, alleging “violations of the public-trust doctrine, common-law public nuisance, and the Michigan Environmental Protection Act.” Federal law allowed Enbridge to seek to move the case to federal court within 30 days of the initial filing.

Enbridge did not do so, but the Canada-based multinational company has since argued that it still should be allowed to deal with the case in federal court, as it is doing in a similar case brought by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.

The specific question before the Supreme Court is a very technical legal one: Even though Enbridge failed to request the move to federal court in a timely way, should that prevent Enbridge from moving it later?

A sensitive waterway

There is no debate that Line 5’s crossing of the Straits of Mackinac – which separate Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas right where Lakes Michigan and Huron meet – lies within Michigan’s territorial boundaries.

The lawsuits from Nessel and Whitmer are attempting to stop Enbridge from operating the pipeline in this sensitive area of the Great Lakes.

The risks became clearer to the public when a ship’s anchor struck the underwater pipeline in 2018 and another ship damaged one of the pipe’s supports in 2020. In the 2018 incident, some fluid – not crude oil – leaked into the lake water.

But Enbridge is refusing to shut the pipeline down. The company says the dispute belongs in federal court because state laws and regulations generally do not apply to this pipeline, which carries mostly Canadian oil to mostly Canadian refineries, using Michigan and the Great Lakes as a shortcut. Enbridge maintains that a treaty with Canada supersedes state authority.

The ruling from the Supreme Court will likely be narrow and procedural. However, all parties seem to agree that the decision will also have much wider consequences, including being a key determinant and signal of states’ rights to protect their waterways and other natural resources in the face of industry opposition.

Bad River Band vs. Enbridge Energy

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the Line 5 oil pipeline passes through the reservation of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and the pending legal outcome in a separate federal court case is well beyond procedural.

The band revoked Enbridge’s easement in 2013, but Enbridge has refused to remove the pipeline, so – after years of failed negotiations – the Bad River Band sued in 2019.

U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled in 2023 that Enbridge had been trespassing for 10 years and awarded US$3 million in damage payments. Conley gave Enbridge until June 2026 to find an alternative route around the Bad River Band’s land, or shut the pipeline down.

As this date approaches with no clear resolution in sight, the Trump administration joined Enbridge in seeking to reverse that decision and keep Line 5 open. While Conley’s decision is being contested by both Enbridge and the Bad River Band in an appeals court one level below the U.S. Supreme Court, the status of the pipeline during this legal process is very much in question.

Line 5 cannot operate without the Bad River Band reservation section, but the deeper issue is about Indigenous peoples’ rights to control their own lands and future on reservations. If Enbridge wins, many analysts believe that Indigenous rights to self-determination on reservations will be significantly eroded.

Attempts to reroute

Enbridge has a two-pronged strategy to save Line 5 from decommissioning: fight in the courts against the state of Michigan and the Bad River Band, while simultaneously working to reroute the pipeline around these problematic areas.

In the Straits of Mackinac, that means attempting to put Line 5 in a tunnel underneath Lake Michigan. This requires federal permits – which will likely be issued soon – as well as state permits. The permission issued by the Michigan Public Service Commission to build the tunnel is being challenged in the Michigan Supreme Court, while advocates are pressuring Whitmer not to issue another state permit that is also required.

The situation is similar in Wisconsin, where federal permits for rerouting the pipeline outside the reservation – but not beyond the watershed serving the Bad River Band’s land – were issued in October 2025 by the Trump administration. The state permit is caught up in legal and political challenges.

In each case, the immediate issue is about the direct environmental impacts of the projects. But also in each case, the underlying battle is about the long-term effects of projects involving fossil fuels. Environmental advocates want the state and federal agencies to consider the permits in light of the potential for more climatic, health and environmental damage from burning the oil the pipeline carries. Enbridge and its allies want to focus narrowly on local ecological impacts and not on the larger debate about the future of fossil fuels.

The bigger debate

As the highest court in the land considers what some might see as a very mundane and localized issue, I believe it’s useful to peel back the layers and see deeper meaning. Jeffrey Insko, an American studies professor at Oakland University and tireless chronicler and analyst of the Line 5 saga, summarizes this depth well:

“If shutting down Line 5 were about nothing more than getting an aging pipeline out of the water, if it weren’t about addressing the climate crisis, about reducing fossil fuel consumption, about a habitable future, about cultivating better relations with the more-than-human world, about respecting Indigenous rights and lifeways, it wouldn’t be a movement worth having. It would just be a technical problem with a technical solution, one that basically accepts the way things are. But shutting down Line 5 is ultimately a step toward changing the way things are.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling may be on technical grounds, but its repercussions could be very wide indeed.

Mike Shriberg previously worked at the National Wildlife Federation which received external funding from foundations and private donors to work on issues related to the Line 5 oil pipeline. He currently does not receive any funding relating to the Line 5 oil pipeline.

– ref. Supreme Court’s Michigan pipeline case is about Native rights and fossil fuels, not just technical legal procedure – https://theconversation.com/supreme-courts-michigan-pipeline-case-is-about-native-rights-and-fossil-fuels-not-just-technical-legal-procedure-275889

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Joel Carnevale, Assistant Professor of Management, Florida International University

Generative artificial intelligence has become a routine part of creative work.

Novelists are using it to develop plots. Musicians are experimenting with AI-generated sounds. Filmmakers are incorporating it into their editing process. And when the software company Adobe surveyed more than 2,500 creative professionals across four continents in 2024, it found that roughly 83% reported using AI in their work, with 69% saying it helped them express their creativity more effectively.

The appeal is understandable. Emerging research shows that generative AI can support the creative process and, at times, produce outputs that people prefer to work made by humans alone.

Yet there’s an important caveat that my colleagues and I have recently begun to explore in our research: Positive views of creative work often shift once people learn that AI was involved.

Because generative AI can produce original content with minimal human input, its use raises questions about quality, authorship and authenticity. Especially for creative work closely tied to personal expression and intent, AI involvement can complicate how audiences interpret the final product.

Organizational behavior researchers Anand Benegal, Lynne Vincent and I study how people establish, maintain and defend their reputations, particularly in creative fields.

We wanted to know whether using AI carries a reputational cost – and whether established artists are shielded from the backlash.

No one is immune

When we set out to examine these questions, two competing possibilities emerged.

On one hand, individuals with strong reputations are often granted greater latitude. Their actions are interpreted more favorably and their intentions given the benefit of the doubt. So established artists who use novel technologies like AI may be seen as innovative or forward-thinking, while novices are viewed as dependent or incompetent.

On the other hand, established creators may be held to higher standards. Because their reputations are closely tied to originality and personal expression, AI use can appear inconsistent with that image, inviting greater scrutiny rather than leniency.

To test these competing possibilities, we conducted an experiment in which participants listened to the same short musical composition, which was described as part of an upcoming video game soundtrack.

For the purposes of the experiment, we misled some of the participants by telling them that the piece had been written by Academy Award–winning film composer Hans Zimmer. We told others that it had been created by a first-year college music student.

Across the experimental conditions, some participants were informed that the work was created “in collaboration with AI technology,” while others received no such information. We then measured changes in participants’ perceptions of the creator’s reputation, perceptions of the creator’s competence and how much credit they attributed to the creator versus the AI.

Our results showed that the creator’s existing reputation did not protect them: Both Zimmer’s reputation and that of the novice took a hit when AI involvement was disclosed. For creators considering whether their past success will shield them, our study suggests this might not be the case.

Credit where credit is due?

That said, reputation was not entirely irrelevant – it did shape how evaluators interpreted the creator’s role in the work.

The preexisting reputations of established creators did provide a limited advantage. When we asked participants to indicate how much of the work they attributed to the human creator versus the AI, evaluators were more likely to assume Zimmer had relied less on AI.

In other words, an artist’s prior reputation shaped how people judged authorship, even if it didn’t shield them from reputational damage.

This distinction points to an important implication. The backlash may not stem simply from the presence of AI but from how observers interpret the balance between human contribution and AI assistance.

At what point does collaborating with AI begin to be perceived less like assistance and more like handing over control of the creative process? In other words, when does AI’s role become substantial enough that it is seen as the primary author of the final product?

For instance, a composer might use AI to clean up background noise, adjust timing or suggest alternative harmonies – decisions that refine but do not fundamentally alter their original work. Alternatively, the composer might ask AI to generate multiple melodies, select one they like and make minor adjustments to tempo or instrumentation.

Our study did not vary the degree of AI involvement; participants were told only that AI was used or not mentioned at all.

But the findings suggest that how much AI is used – and how central it appears to the creative process – matters. For creators and organizations, the question may not be whether AI is involved but whether audiences are made aware of the extent of its involvement.

To disclose or not to disclose?

A practical question that naturally follows is whether creators should disclose their AI use.

The New York Times recently reported that some romance novelists were quietly incorporating AI tools into their writing process without disclosing it to readers. This reluctance appears to be widespread: A 2025 workplace survey found that nearly half of employees conceal their use of AI tools, often out of concern that others will view them as cutting corners or question their competence.

Is silence strategically wiser than transparency?

In our first experiment, the composer’s work either mentioned AI collaboration or didn’t mention AI at all.

But we went on to conduct a second experiment to examine disclosure more directly. This time, participants evaluated an employee at an advertising agency.

Everyone first learned that this employee had a strong reputation for creativity. Then, depending on the version of the scenario they saw, the employee either openly said they used AI to help with their creative work; said they used AI only for administrative tasks, such as scheduling meetings; explicitly said they avoided using AI because creativity should come from one’s own thoughts and experiences; or said nothing about AI at all.

This allowed us to see how both using AI and how that use was disclosed influenced judgments of the employee’s creativity and reputation.

The results were clear in one respect: Disclosing AI use harmed the employee’s reputation.

Just as importantly, explicitly stating that AI was not used did not improve evaluations. In other words, there was no reputational advantage to publicly distancing oneself from AI. Staying silent led to evaluations that were at least as favorable as explicitly saying no AI was used.

Our findings suggest that disclosure decisions are asymmetric. For creators who use AI, transparency carries costs. For those who abstain, making clear that they didn’t use AI doesn’t confer an advantage over remaining silent.

Debates over disclosure of AI use in creative fields will continue to be hotly debated. But from a reputational standpoint – at least for now – our findings suggest that disclosing AI use carries costs.

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

– ref. Artists and writers are often hesitant to disclose they’ve collaborated with AI – and those fears may be justified – https://theconversation.com/artists-and-writers-are-often-hesitant-to-disclose-theyve-collaborated-with-ai-and-those-fears-may-be-justified-275888