Global society makes billions of images and uploads hundreds of thousands of hours of video on the internet every day.

The problem is, some of this content is misleading or downright wrong. And when it’s in visual form, it can be particularly convincing.

Take the Met Gala that happened earlier this month in New York. While photographers snapped photos of Rhianna, Beyoncé and Nicole Kidman as they strutted their stuff, others saw “photos” of celebrities, such as Rosalía, Lady Gaga and Jacob Elordi, who were actually elsewhere (the images in the below Instagram carousel are AI generated).

While this type of AI slop might seem harmless and can be easily verified, other “media fakery” is becoming far more problematic and demands more robust techniques to verify.

Traditional verification techniques are falling short as AI becomes increasingly convincing and the line between authentic and synthetic blurs. This is true across all content, from still images to moving ones and audio deepfakes.

The volume of content and the speed at which it travels doesn’t help. It also doesn’t help that fact-checking can take hours or days while fakes can be created in seconds.

First, equip yourself

Guides on detecting AI-generated content suggest multiple strategies and acknowledge there are no perfect solutions. But there are helpful things you can do.

Familiarise yourself with examples of fakes and study how they were fact-checked. This helps you understand what is possible and learn how fact-checkers sort real from fake.

Look deeply. Zoom in. Pause the content or watch it frame-by-frame. Inspect the small details. Look out for inconsistencies, textures that are flat when they shouldn’t be, or patterns that are too perfect or are inexplicably off. Does the location shown match with where the scene is purported to be? Do shadows fall naturally and do lines follow the rules of perspective?

Look widely. Are you familiar with the source? What else does it publish and how long has it been around? What do other trusted sources say? How does this depiction compare to others that are available? Or if there aren’t others available, should that give you pause?

Then, apply your learnings

Let’s take an example and work through it together.

This Facebook reel, posted by an account called “Real Talk Hub”, purports to show migrants being stopped and returned by Australian police at an airport.

Before getting too granular, let’s take stock of the opening image.

The video uses scale to show what appears to be a long stream of passengers. Some are moving toward and some are moving away from a plane. It is difficult to identify specifics in the video. The superimposed text blocks almost all of the horizon line. Shallow depth of field makes aspects in the distance blurry and hard to discern.

Many of the passengers have darker skin and are visually coded as “other”. They interact with a light-skinned police officer who takes notes on a clipboard.

The vertical video is framed carefully to not reveal identifiers like the name of the airline that seems to start with the letter “P”. This makes it difficult to search the airline’s name and whether credible sources corroborate the story that’s told.

Even though the people and scenes look realistic at first glance, the video’s integrity unravels when we slow down and look closer. People in the passenger line morph and transform.

The officer is able to single-handedly remove the paper from the clipboard and it appears to inexplicably leave white strips behind. The police vests look different to images you can find in verified media photos of the Australian Federal Police.

Taken together, all these clues suggest the video is AI-generated.

Think like a fact-checker

Many AI-generated videos can trick you and create a very compelling narrative. So, fact-checkers have developed triangulated methodologies that examine elements beyond just what you see in the video.

One way to do this is to systematically check contextual factors – the other things surrounding the content. Our team’s research has found professional fact-checkers usually pay attention to the type of social media accounts or websites distributing suspicious media.

For this AAP verification on a video about banning dogs on the beach, it was crucial to inspect the user’s activity and posting patterns.

In addition to visual anomalies, the fact-checkers also found an invisible watermark that helped them determine the content was AI-generated.

Other things to check are how long a social media account has been operating, how often the social media account posts, and whether the account is transparent about its use of AI.

These aren’t fool-proof indicators of authenticity, though. The migrant example above comes from an account that is about five years old. It also comes from a “verified” account, which might make it feel more credible. But both Facebook and X now let users pay for this verification.

Overall, when it comes to suspect images or video, don’t just look deeply. Also look widely.

AI-generated content can increasingly fool our eyes, so you also have to look beyond what’s in the video. Taking a mixed-methods approach that considers visual and contextual clues can help. By training your ability to think like a fact-checker, you can stay safer online.

Read more: We teach young people to write. In the age of AI, we must teach them how to see

Silvia Montaña-Niño is also associate investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society and the Fact Check Research Team at this centre.

T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

In 1973, Japanese food company Calbee started attaching free collectable baseball player cards to its potato chip packets (and continues to do so today). It was mimicking a trend that had already taken off in tobacco markets in Japan and overseas. Baseball, Japan’s national sport, was an obvious choice for Calbee to attract consumers.

Some four years later, rival company Lotte joined the trend, launching a chocolate wafer snack with Bikkuriman “surprise man” stickers. These stickers quickly caught on – and eventually spawned an entire fantasy world that made its way to anime and manga.

Both Calbee and Lotte helped set a template for how children’s collectables could become objects of desire, competition and, later, nostalgia. Bikkuriman is still sold today, with rare 1980s Super Zeus stickers going for thousands of dollars to adult collectors.

It was against this backdrop that Satoshi Tajiri (born 1965) grew up. He would have been about 12 when the first Bikkuriman card was released. Satoshi himself would end up creating one of the most popular collectable card games in the world: Pokémon.

These cards are now so highly coveted they are driving international crime, getting banned from schools, and locked behind glass cabinets in stores.

Creating the cultural conditions for a hit

Satoshi drew on a childhood memory when he created Pokémon (short for “Pocket Monsters”): catching insects and trading them with friends.

He imagined a Nintendo Game Boy game where players could collect and exchange monsters. After seven years in development, Pocket Monsters Red and Green launched in February 1996. This was followed by a trading card game in October.

In 1997, the anime began airing on Japanese television, with a protagonist also named Satoshi (the name still used in Japan today). Pikachu – originally just one of 151 monsters – became the face of the franchise.

Like Bikkuriman, Pocket Monster spread rapidly across games, TV and print media. But unlike Bikkuriman, it also aimed to cross borders.

The English-language version of the game was released in 1998, with its name changed to Pokémon. “Pocket Monsters” may have sounded awkward, or even suggestive, to English speakers. Although it remains the official name in Japan, most Japanese fans also use the portmanteau, Pokémon.

Character names were also adapted and anglicised for overseas audiences.

For instance, Satoshi became Ash. Nyarth, a bipedal cat thought to be inspired by the Japanese lucky charm maneki-neko, became Meowth, to match the English-language cat sound. (Pikachu, drawing on the Japanese onomatopoeia of “pika” and “chu”, was retained.)

Soon enough, the character names, types and Pokédex numbers became shared internationally, allowing players the world over to connect through a shared Pokémon language. In 2004, the first World Championship for the Pokémon Trading Card Game was held in the United States.

Squirtle in your neighbourhood

It’s difficult for any single commodity to maintain popularity over decades. During the early 2010s, Nintendo suffered significantly, even falling into deficit, and the Pokémon franchise faced competition from rivals such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Yo-Kai Watch.

The old-school model of marketing through traditional media was no longer enough for global dominance. To survive, Pokémon would need to adopt the logic of new media platforms – and catch the eye of the online generation. Then came Pokémon GO.

The 2016 smartphone app was developed by American software company Niantic, in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.

Through augmented reality, parks, shopping streets and neighbourhoods gained new meaning as potential locations for your next Pokémon catch. One grandfather in Taiwan made the news for using 64 smartphones at once.

Some players even travelled internationally to capture region-exclusive Pokémon, such as Kangaskhan in Australia, which was clearly modelled on a kangaroo.

Downloaded more than 500 million times, the enormous success of Pokémon GO played a key role in re-energising the global Pokémon fandom. Many players sought out the cards they had collected as children.

Interest was further amplified by the release of Pokémon TCG Pocket. Released in 2024, this app digitised the old-school Japanese tabletop to make it accesible for all.

Chasing profits and childhood memories

Then there was another, less predictable factor that drove the popularity of Pokémon cards: COVID lockdowns. With more time at home, people dug out old binders and rediscovered their childhood cards – many of which had high value – and began trading to make money.

This has led to a renewed interest in rare cards such as the Pikachu Illustrator, which was distributed in 1998 to the winners of an illustration contest. The card features artwork by Atsuko Nishida, Pikachu’s original designer. With only 39 copies known to exist, collectors call it the “holy grail” of Pokémon cards.

Earlier this year, influencer Logan Paul sold his Pikachu Illustrator for US$16.492 million, setting a record for the most expensive trading card ever sold.

This potential for profit has led to a surge in Pokémon card-related crime, as the cards are easy to carry, hide and move internationally. We’ve seen a wave of burglaries targeting hobby shops all over the world, including in Australia, the US and Japan.

Many fans may now find themselves unable to purchase cards due to the economic bubble. Still, it seems demand is high; roughly 10.2 billion cards were printed from 2024 to 2025.

Pokémon cards are a rare kind of tangible object. They connect the digital to the physical – the past to the present – and Japan to the world. They aren’t just collectables; they are a cultural currency, which, unfortunately, can be stolen.

Tets Kimura 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.

Internal dissent within Labor over AUKUS has erupted again, with former cabinet minister Ed Husic suggesting there should be a fresh caucus vote on the controversial agreement.

Meanwhile, critics have launched a public inquiry into AUKUS headed by former Labor minister Peter Garrett (of Midnight Oil fame), and crossbenchers have joined a call for the government to be “transparent with the Australian people about the risks to the delivery of the AUKUS submarine program and how they will effectively manage those risks”.

Husic raised AUKUS at Tuesday’s caucus meeting after a weekend announcement that Australia will now receive three secondhand Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the United States instead of the earlier plan for one new and two used boats.

Read more: Australia has been the victim of an AUKUS ‘bait and switch’

Defence Minister Richard Marles met his US and British counterparts on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore at the weekend, when the revised arrangement was announced.

The changed arrangements are providing another opportunity for the critics.

The new outbreak comes as Labor’s national conference looms in July, where the pact, and questions around its submarines, will be a divisive issue that will require careful management by the factional leaders. AUKUS was contested at the 2023 national conference.

In his question to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Husic asked whether, given the recent changes relating to the submarines, Albanese thought the previous caucus resolution of support, taken in opposition, still stood.

Albanese pushed support for the AUKUS agreement through caucus immediately after it was announced in 2021, with minimum opportunity for consideration. He was anxious not to allow the issue to derail Labor’s 2022 election chances.

At Tuesday’s caucus, Husic was slapped down by Albanese and Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy.

Albanese said AUKUS was about more than submarines.

Conroy said that at the time of the caucus decision, there was no deal on the Virginia-class submarines. That was dealt with after Labor came to government because of an identified capability gap, Conroy said. The decision in opposition had dealt with whether or not caucus would permit a nuclear-build within Australia, he said.

Conroy also said the revised arrangement would be much easier to manage because the three submarines would all be of the same type.

Outside caucus, Husic said the changed arrangements raised questions about Australian sovereignty in the future.

“We are not going to get the deal that was promised,” he said on Sky. He said he had reservations about Australia’s ability “to exercise sovereignty in the way that we will want to, given how transactional the Trump administration is”.

“You know, you can almost imagine them saying, ‘We give you these, you will do this with them’. And so there’s an active sovereignty question there.”

Launching the inquiry, Garrett said AUKUS “was the most significant, and by far the most costly decision made in secret by an Australian government, tying us to two other sovereign governments, and taking out an extraordinary amount of taxpayers’ money on a proposition which has got a lot of distinct and very difficult complexities and potential problems lying up ahead”.

As well as Garrett the panel includes former federal Labor minister and former Western Australian premier Carmen Lawrence and former chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie.

Barrie said he was joining the inquiry because he wanted to be assured AUKUS would be in Australia’s best interests.

A statement on the inquiry, which is backed by a number of unions and other groups, said: “There has never been a more critical time to get the truth about AUKUS and what it means for our nation”.

“The Federal Government is planning to spend an unprecedented $368 billion-plus of our taxes on submarines without answers to basic questions like: will Australia receive the submarines we’re paying for, where will the high-level nuclear waste be stored, how many Australian jobs will this create and at what cost?”

The most important question was: “will this make us safer — or turn us into a nuclear target?”

The inquiry will be taking submissions from the public and experts and holding public hearings in most capital cities. It is being crowd-funded and is to report by October 30.

Crossbencher Allegra Spender moved a “Matter of Public Importance” in parliament calling for transparency. Her call was supported by six other crossbenchers and by Barrie. She said in a statement:

Recent developments are highlighting escalating risks to the delivery of the AUKUS project and Australia’s ability to manage those risks.

The USA is continuing to fail to produce submarines at the rate that is required for the President to be able to commit to giving Australia Virginia-class submarines.

The government has just agreed with the USA that Australia will not get any new Virginia-class submarines, reducing Australia’s capability, with no justification that this is in Australia’s interests. The government has admitted there are changes to the program based on the Colby Review but have not been transparent about what the review said and what changes are coming from it.

Other crossbenchers expressing concern were teals Monique Ryan, Kate Chaney, Nicolette Boele, Zali Steggall and Sophie Scamps. The list also included non-teal independent Dai Le who said, “If the government can scrutinise disability support down to the dollar, it can scrutinise a $368 billion submarine deal”.

Michelle Grattan 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.

Headlines might describe meat as “a significant health risk” or “essential for a healthy and balanced diet”.

So what’s behind these seemingly contradicatory statements?

Our new research suggests one reason is who pays for the science behind the studies we see discussed online or via social media.

We examined whether meat industry involvement is linked to how scientific papers portray the health effects of eating meat.

We found studies with ties to the meat industry were 16 times more likely to conclude meat is harmless or beneficial, compared with studies without such ties.

Conflicts of interest in nutrition research are not new. Analyses of sugar, ultra-processed foods, and drinks have found the same pattern: industry-funded studies are more likely to produce outcomes that favour the sponsor’s commercial interests.

This can muddy the evidence base used to guide dietary guidelines and policy, which can influence consumers’ choices.

What we did

The meat industry’s role in shaping nutrition science has received little systematic scrutiny. Our aim was to address this through a simple question: when the meat industry is involved in a study, does that change the study’s conclusion about meat’s health effects?

We searched for nutrition studies published between 2014 and 2023 that examined how eating meat relates to health.

For each study, we recorded declared funding sources, author affiliations and declared conflicts of interest. For example, a study that declared funding by Meat & Livestock Australia was identified as a study with industry ties.

We then classified the paper’s conclusion about meat as favourable, neutral or unfavourable. For example, if a study concluded eating meat may cause cancer, this was classified as unfavourable.

We then analysed whether those conclusions were associated with meat industry ties. We were testing whether there was a statistical link between industry involvement and a more positive “spin” on meat.

What we found

Of the 500 studies included, 78 (15.6%) reported some form of industry involvement.

Studies that disclosed ties to meat related organisations were 16 times more likely to conclude meat was beneficial.

Studies that did not provide a funding statement or conflict of interest declaration also tended to report more positive findings, raising further questions about transparency in nutrition research. Perhaps there was meat industry involvement in this research but it was not declared. We have no way of knowing.

Importantly, we were not judging whether individual studies were “right” or “wrong” about meat’s contribution to health. Instead, we showed that the pattern of conclusions in the literature is strongly linked to who is paying the bills.

This finding is consistent with broader work on food industry sponsorship and outcomes in nutrition science.

Why it matters

Most people will never read an academic paper, but many will encounter its findings via news stories, social media, industry communications or even dietary guidelines.

Journalists and policymakers often rely on “the weight of the evidence” when deciding what messages to send about meat and health.

If industry involvement systematically tilts that evidence base, the public may be misinformed about foods in ways that do not fully reflect all the independent science.

For people trying to make sense of conflicting nutrition headlines, this means apparent scientific disagreement may reflect differences in who supported the research, not differences in the data.

Our findings do not mean every study with meat industry ties study is invalid, nor that independent studies are by default of higher quality. But they do suggest industry involvement should be treated as a key piece of information when weighing up nutrition claims.

For readers, a useful rule of thumb is to look beyond the headline and ask: who funded this study, and do the authors have financial ties to the products being discussed?

Journalists can help by routinely reporting funding sources and conflicts of interest when covering nutrition stories, and by seeking independent experts to contextualise new findings.

What needs to happen next?

Our study adds to growing calls for stronger safeguards around conflicts of interest in nutrition research. At a minimum, clear disclosure of funding sources and conflicts of interest should be non negotiable, and journals should enforce these policies consistently.

However, disclosure only tells us a conflict exists. It does not remove the conflict. Managing, and ideally eliminating conflicts of interest should be a higher priority than solely declaring them.

One way to do this is through greater public and independent funding to enable researchers to conduct studies without relying on support from commercial industries.

The public rightly expects nutrition advice to be grounded in the best available evidence. Our findings suggest that when it comes to meat, industry involvement can tilt that evidence in a certain direction.

Recognising and correcting for that tilt is an essential step towards more trustworthy dietary guidance.

Navid Teimouri receives funding from an Australian government research training program (RTP) scholarship for higher degree by research students.

Katherine Cullerton receives funding from the World Health Organization and NHMRC.

The International Court of Justice has just resolved a 14-year dispute over workers’ right to strike – giving trade unions worldwide a significant win.

In a historic decision late last week, the court issued an advisory opinion that the right to strike is protected by a United Nations treaty, the International Labour Organization’s Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (also known as convention 87).

The new court decision does not mean we’ll suddenly see outbreaks of strike action all over the world.

However, it does matter right around the world – particularly in 158 countries that have ratified convention 87, including Australia, Canada, Indonesia and the United Kingdom.

A fight triggered by an employers’ ‘strike’

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is unique among the United Nations’ agencies because of its “tripartite” (three part) membership: with representatives from member states, trade unions and employer groups.

In 1948, the ILO adopted convention 87. All the countries that have since formally adopted the convention (a process called “ratification”) committed themselves to protecting freedom of association and the right to organise in their own domestic laws.

The convention made no explicit reference to the right to strike. Yet for decades the ILO’s supervisory bodies – which supervise the implementation of convention obligations – said that the convention did protect the right to strike.

Why? That view was based on the wording of the convention, stating workers have the right to form their own associations and organise their own programmes and activities. Strike action was interpreted as one of those protected activities.

But in 2012, the ILO’s employer representatives decided that longstanding interpretation was wrong – so they staged a “strike” of their own.

For the past 14 years, the employer representatives have refused to cooperate with ILO supervisory processes considering if countries are complying with convention 87 when the right to strike was involved.

Since 2023, that stalemate has been before the International Court of Justice – which is the court which has the power to interpret ILO conventions.

Last week, the court’s judges voted ten to four in favour of the unions’ argument, concluding “the right to strike of workers and their organizations is protected” under the convention.

What was at stake

While countries aren’t legally bound to follow International Court of Justice’s advisory decisions, like this one, they do still carry significant legal and political weight worldwide.

The ILO is the only place in international law where trade unions can make formal complaints if a country is not respecting its obligations to protect the right to strike.

All of that was at risk if the International Court of Justice had made a different decision. A finding that went the other way – in favour of the employers’ case – would have weakened the right to strike worldwide.

Last week’s court finding was a huge win for the international trade union movement.

Australia shows why it matters

The advisory opinion is particularly significant for the 158 nations that have ratified convention 87. Here’s an example of why.

Australia used to be thought of as a country with high rates of strike action.

However, since Australia legislated for a right to strike in 1993, that has stopped being true. In fact, over recent decades, strike action in Australia has stayed as low as it has ever been.

Strike rates in Australia are so low partially because it is harder than people realise to take lawful strike action here.

Since 1993 when a legislated right to strike was introduced, the laws that say when you can strike legally have got tighter and tighter, and the hurdles unions have to jump have got higher and higher.

Even when unions can satisfy the rules around when they can strike, it is easy to get it wrong. When that happens, they can lose the right to strike altogether.

That may sound like a good thing, especially if you’ve ever been caught in a train worker strike, or had to keep children home during a teachers’ strike.

But not being able to strike significantly weakens all workers’ bargaining power. When the cost of living rises and wages don’t keep up, employees end up financially worse off than before.

Read more: Real wages have gone backwards. Even earning $100,000 isn’t what it used to be

What it could mean long term

Like a lot of other nations, Australia won’t see any instant impacts of this new international court advisory opinion.

However, the court’s finding does mean the ILO is no longer stuck in a deadlock. The ICJ decision means that the ILO supervisory bodies can start scrutinising Australia’s strike laws again.

It also means Australian unions have a better chance of bringing complaints about our laws to the ILO – and being successful.

That potential for increased international scrutiny may help shift the dial on Australia’s highly restrictive strike laws.

This is a good thing for workers. A healthy industrial relations system needs a well-protected, accessible right to strike.

Shae McCrystal has received funding from the Australian Research Council. She has published several books including 'The Right to Strike in Australia' and 'Strike Ballots, Democracy and Law'.

If you’ve ever taken your child to a maternal, child and family health nurse for a growth check, you might have felt a mix of curiosity and anxiety.

As health professionals, we’re often asked: is my baby gaining enough weight? Am I feeding enough? Why did they drop a percentile? Why is my friend’s baby bigger than mine? Am I doing something wrong?

In most cases, the answer is that there is nothing wrong at all. Let’s look at what the measurements actually mean and we’ll answer some questions that commonly arise during these appointments.

What actually happens at a growth check?

Growth checks are usually done by a maternal, child and family health nurse at a community health centre, or by your family GP.

Each state and territory, as well as New Zealand, has its own schedule of recommended growth and development checks. In Victoria, for example, appointments are booked when your baby is aged two weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, four months, eight months, 12 months, 18 months, two years, and three and a half years.

In the early weeks, when feeding is still being established and child growth is rapid, these appointments can help identify feeding difficulties.

First, the nurse will observe your baby or child, then they will weigh them, measure their length (if they’re babies) or height, and measure their head circumference. They plot these numbers on a growth chart in your child’s health record or the Well Child Tamariki Ora book in New Zealand.

The nurse will check your child’s alertness, appearance and muscle tone. They will also ask questions about feeding, sleep, wet/dirty nappies and any recent changes.

Nurses are there to support you as a new parent. They provide reassurance and a chance to ask questions to help build confidence during a period that can feel uncertain.

Over time, growth checks allow nurses to see if your child is growing and developing at an expected rate.

For toddlers and preschoolers, the nurse will check for typical development in behaviour, language and play. If required, they will provide support or referrals to a GP who may then refer to a paediatrician, speech pathologist, occupational therapist, or psychologist, depending on the child’s needs.

What do the dots on a growth chart really mean?

Growth charts in Australia and New Zealand are based on the World Health Organization’s Child Growth Standards, which reflect optimal growth for healthy, breastfed children.

They provide context for your child’s growth through a reference population of children of the same age and sex. The curved lines are called percentiles.

• a child on the 50th percentile is right in the middle
• a child on the 25th percentile is smaller than average
• a child on the 85th percentile is larger than average.

If your child is on the 25th percentile for weight, it means that if 100 children of the same age and sex were lined up in increasing order of weight, your child would be number 25. So 75 children would weigh more and 24 would weigh less.

A single measurement tells very little. The pattern of the weight over time is even more important.

But there is no “ideal” percentile. Every child grows at their own pace and this can be influenced by their genetics, ethnicity, birthweight and gestation. Even siblings or twins may follow different patterns.

Read more: Our obsession with infant growth charts may be fuelling childhood obesity

When should parents be concerned?

Small fluctuations on the chart are common, as babies grow in spurts. But nurses may look more closely if a child:

• crosses several percentile lines over time – either in an upward or downward trend
• is showing signs of feeding difficulties or dehydration
• appears unwell.

Even in these cases, the approach is careful assessment, not alarm, and your nurse might suggest additional checks. This helps see whether a feeding adjustment is working, or whether something else might need attention.

In most cases, extra visits end with reassurance. When there is a concern, extra visits allow things to be identified and addressed early.

Read more: How do I know if my child is developing normally?

3 common questions answered

1. When should I consider supplementing with formula?

Breastfeeding is recommended where possible. But there are situations where supplementing with formula might be recommended – for example, when there are concerns about weight gain. In these cases, we always recommend to discuss supplementing with your trusted health care provider.

Your nurse is there to support your child and reassure you – not to judge how you feed them.

2. Should I start solids early if my baby is ‘big’?

In short, no. The guidelines recommend introducing solids at around six months. This should be done when babies show developmental readiness, not because of their size or percentile.

Breastmilk or formula still meets all nutritional needs until around six months.

Starting solids early may increase risks of choking, tummy upset and a greater chance of being overweight later in life.

3. Why doesn’t growth happen steadily week to week?

Babies grow in spurts, not in smooth lines and weight can vary with feeding, sleep and any recent illness.

Periods of rapid growth often occur in the early weeks, around six to eight weeks, three to four months, and around six months with babies growing rapidly throughout the first year of life. During these times, babies may feed more or seem unsettled.

Where to find more support

For more support, contact your local GP and consider asking for a referral to a lactation consultant, paediatrician or dietitian.

As part of the Australian government’s Pregnancy, Birth and Baby program, you can phone (1800 882 436) or video call a maternal and child health nurses for free, seven days a week from 7am to midnight. Or for breastfeeding issues, call the Breastfeeding Helpline on 1800 mum 2 mum (1800 686 268).

For parents in New Zealand, the government’s Plunketline (0800 933 922) is available 24–7 for advice about child health and parenting.

Read more: Need a doctor or nurse after hours? How to get virtual or in-person care in Australia – including for free

Amit Arora receives funding from the Australlian National Health and Medical Research Council and NSW Ministry of Health.

Hannah Dahlen receives funding from Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and Medical Research Future Fund.

Jessica Appleton is a board member with Australian College of Children and Young People's Nurses.

Lynn Kemp receives funding from Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund.

If there’s one area of New Zealand foreign policy that demands delicate diplomatic language from elected officials, it is the country’s nuclear-free status.

So when Defence Minister Chris Penk suggested it “would be helpful” to have a conversation about the difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion, the response was swift.

Opposition parties questioned whether the government was planning a review of the relevant legislation, forcing Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to confirm there would be no change to the policy.

Unfortunately, the issue may not be that easy to avoid in the near future.

Penk was speaking at a security forum in Singapore and responding to a reporter’s query about what Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines might mean for nuclear-free New Zealand.

That’s a fair question, given Australia is New Zealand’s only formal ally, and closer military relations between the two countries are central to the government’s Defence Capability Plan.

The AUKUS factor

Penk’s comments were also timed unfortunately, coming a day after United States Secretary of War Pete Hegseth suggested New Zealand was “freeloading” as an ally, and defence spending at 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) was “not enough”.

This tacit pressure comes at a time when global military expenditure has accelerated rapidly, wars and conflicts are expanding, and fears grow about a new arms race.

Hegseth is pushing for partner nations to “reach a level where 3.5% of national spending goes towards their own military”.

That reflects the recent commitment by NATO countries to invest 5% of GDP annually on defence and security by 2035 (with 3.5% on core military requirements).

New Zealand and Australia are not members, but both have partnership agreements with NATO. Australia currently spends 2.2% of its GDP on the military, and is aiming for 3% by 2033.

New Zealand aims to hit the 2% target in 2032, which would bring spending broadly in line with peacetime military budgets over the past century. Whether that will be enough, however, is a key question – especially as advances in military technology gather pace.

For example, AUKUS partners are about to begin cooperating on the first “Pillar II” initiative, the development of autonomous undersea drone systems. New Zealand is still officially weighing up Pillar II membership, although many of the practical steps required seem to be already underway, and the price of entry to this club will be expensive.

Even outside AUKUS, New Zealand faces a steep bill to replace its ageing navy frigates. While these vessels could supplement Australia’s purchase of 11 new frigates and create efficiencies in the process, it would still stretch spending well beyond the 2% of GDP target.

Undermining nuclear-free law

There’s a wider perspective needed, too. Hegseth’s criticisms must be seen in the context of his administration’s undermining of the international rules-based order central to New Zealand foreign policy.

Any suggestion by a cabinet minister – however vaguely phrased or subsequently rejected by the prime minister – that part of the nuclear free policy might be on the negotiating table becomes doubly sensitive.

The Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act prohibits the acquisition, testing or stationing of nuclear weapons in New Zealand. It also bans “entry into the internal waters […] by any ship whose propulsion is wholly or partly dependent on nuclear power”.

That means foreign vessels retain freedom of navigation rights, in accordance with international law, for peaceful transit through New Zealand’s territorial waters – but they can’t land.

Chipping away at part of the comprehensive anti-nuclear policy would undermine the overall purpose of the law:

to promote and encourage an active and effective contribution by New Zealand to the essential process of disarmament and international arms control.

New Zealand’s commitment to increase military spending should therefore be matched by support for initiatives that seek to reboot arms control, reduce the risk of wars being triggered accidentally and to regulate military use of artificial intelligence.

As even the major nuclear powers concede, any future war between them cannot be won. For a small power such as New Zealand, working to prevent such a catastrophe is the more important objective.

Alexander Gillespie 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.

“Biodegradable” has become one of the most reassuring words in modern packaging. It appears on coffee cups, shopping bags and food containers, implying a promise: this product is better for the environment because nature will eventually take care of it.

However, biodegradability is not a simple yes-or-no property. It exists in shades, which we can measure.

Biodegradation is a complex process. Microbes and molecules present in an environment such as soil attack a material and digest it, much like what happens to food in our gut.

A material is typically defined as biodegradable if it is digested “well” by the environment in which it is placed. The more mass the material loses during digestion, and the more carbon dioxide it produces, the more biodegradable it is.

Different environments digest materials in different ways. Temperature, sunlight, oxygen, moisture and microbial diversity all influence how quickly materials degrade.

Even the most rigorous testing cannot fully capture the complexity of the real world – but it can help guide our choices.

Biodegradability is relative

In the lab we can simulate environments such as landfill, home compost bins and industrial compost facilities. If we understand in which settings a material breaks down better, we can tell the consumer how to best dispose of it and prevent pollution and other issues.

A material that decomposes quickly in an industrial composting facility may persist for years in the ocean or landfill.

Industrial composting systems maintain elevated temperatures, controlled aeration and consistent moisture. Hot, moist and oxygen-rich conditions generally aid biodegradation but they are not easy to come by in a backyard compost bin.

Home compost systems are typically cooler and more variable. The result: a material certified for industrial composting may not break down effectively at home.

Take polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable material generally considered to be a greener alternative to common plastics (like PET). PLA can biodegrade effectively in an industrial composting system. With temperatures above 60°C and controlled moisture, oxygen and microbial activity, microbes can convert PLA into carbon dioxide, water and biomass in just a few days.

Outside these conditions, the story changes. If PLA ends up in landfill, decomposition can be slow because oxygen is limited. In rivers or marine environments, it may persist for years and act as a raft for “alien” species. In your compost bin or worm farm it might disappear in a few months.

Time for standards

There are many ways to measure biodegradability. One common series of tests, OECD 301 assesses “ready biodegradability” in different environments as a material’s ability to biodegrade around 60% within 28 days under controlled conditions.

Industrially compostable materials are tested under very specific conditions. Standards such as EN 13432, used in Europe, assess whether packaging can successfully break down in industrial composting facilities.

To meet the standard, at least 90% of the material must biodegrade into carbon dioxide, water and biomass within six months. These tests typically involve elevated temperatures, controlled aeration, and moisture.

Most biodegradable plastic materials do not disappear cleanly. Instead, they fragment into progressively smaller particles before fully breaking down. During this period, the fragments will continue interacting with organisms and ecosystems.

Compost bins too can get indigestion

Biodegradability standards are helpful for consumers and waste regulators. Nevertheless, they are limited. They often do not test how much of any given material a specific disposal system can sustain at any one time.

This is an important parameter to take into account. Take food waste. When large quantities of food lie in landfill without oxygen, they generate methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide over short timescales.

Other biodegradable materials are no different and can throw out the balance of an ecosystem such as your compost bin, if added in excessive quantities.

Introducing certain materials to a compost bin might also cause certain microbes to thrive and others to suffer, sometimes with unintended consequences, such as making your compost bin smell bad.

In the future, biodegradability tests will likely be paired with ecotoxicity assessments, to help us understand whether a material breaks down safely and without generating harmful byproducts or microbial imbalances.

What can we do?

Few of us have an industrial composting facility nearby to take care of biodegradable materials. Industrially compostable products such as coffee cups often end up sent to landfill alongside conventional waste.

This does not mean individuals are powerless or that biodegradable materials are inherently bad.

You can start by checking local council guidance and choosing products certified for the systems available in your area, or your compost bin.

Ask yourself:

• is this product home compostable or only industrially compostable?

• is there infrastructure locally that can process it?

• has it been independently certified?

As for industrially compostable coffee cups, check that you can return cups to participating cafes. They should not be placed in standard recycling bins or food and organics bins as they are considered contaminants. If unsure, place them in a bin destined for landfill.

Ultimately, the most sustainable option remains a reusable washable cup.

These may seem like small actions but they help push packaging design and waste systems toward greater transparency and accountability.

Moving beyond simple labels

As consumers, we want to make educated choices about their purchases and how they can be disposed of.

For now, we have simple labels. In the future, we will hopefully have more complete information about how materials degrade in industrial composting facilities, home compost bins, soil, freshwater, sea water and landfill sites.

Biodegradable materials offer clear advantages over highly persistent materials, but the term “biodegradable” should not be mistaken for environmentally harmless.

Let’s just remember that a biodegradable material released in the wrong place, at the wrong scale, or under the wrong conditions may behave not very differently from a non-biodegradable material.

Understanding the shades of biodegradability moves the conversation beyond simplistic labels. Nature can break many things down, eventually. The more important question is whether it can do so without getting indigestion.

Alessandra Sutti has received research funding from the Australian Research Council, the Marine Bioproducts Cooperative Research Centre, the Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre and by companies participating in associated projects such as the ARC Research Hub for Functional and Sustainable Fibres and the ARC Training Centre in Sustainable Material and Responsible Technologies for Packaging (SMaRT-Pack), as well as from industry partners associated with these grants, such as HeiQ Pty Ltd, Xefco Pty Ltd, C. Sea Solutions Pty Ltd (trading as ULUU) and Simba Global Pty/Ltd. Alessandra is a paid member of the HeiQ Innovation Advisory Board, is a member of the American Chemical Society and serves as a volunteer member on Standards Australia ME-009 Committee (Microplastics). She collaborates closely with The GLOBE Program (through GLOBE Italy), The University of California Berkeley and San Francisco State University, co-developing microplastics monitoring protocols and is involved in environmental education programmes.

Martin Zaki 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.

India and Pakistan are no strangers to heat. This time of year is the worst, as heat peaks before the monsoon brings cooler conditions from June.

But this year’s heat is something else. Intense, sustained heat began in mid-April. Daily maximum temperatures have topped 46°C in many locations, with some areas running around 5–8°C above seasonal norms.

The unrelenting heat has driven record demand for electricity in India as people turn on air conditioners – and worsened drought conditions affecting more than a million square kilometres across both countries.

When extreme heat combines with humidity, it can be lethal. Human bodies cannot cool themselves easily in these conditions. The heatwave has claimed at least 37 lives in India and 10 in Pakistan. These figures are likely to be a major underestimate, as heat-related deaths are systemically undercounted in India.

Why is it so hot?

It’s usually a hot wait for the monsoon. But several factors can line up to make a bad season much worse.

One reason it’s been so bad this year is due to persistent high-pressure weather systems. When these systems sit in place, they make heatwaves more likely by suppressing cloud formation and reducing the chance of cooling rain. This year, strong high-pressure systems have lingered over parts of India and Pakistan, trapping hot air near the surface and allowing temperatures to build over many days.

With less rain, there’s more heat at ground level and soils dry out. Drier soils make things worse, because less heat is used up evaporating moisture in the soil and more goes into heating the land. High pressure systems can often hang around for many days, allowing extreme heat to build up.

It’s often worst in cities, as concrete and asphalt absorb heat during the day and release it slowly overnight. This means cities stay hotter overnight, boosting health risks for people without access to cooling.

Behind these immediate reasons is the big one: climate change. As the world gets steadily hotter, heatwaves get worse and worse. Estimates from World Weather Attribution suggest the first big heatwave from 15–29 April 2026 was made about three times more likely and about 1°C hotter due to climate change.

At current global levels of global warming (~1.4°C), this means the subcontinent faces similar events about once every five years. At present, we’re tracking towards 2.6°C of warming by 2100. At that level of heat, heatwaves like this would hit every 2-3 years and be 2.2°C hotter.

Humidity makes heat much more lethal

The number on a thermometer is only part of the danger.

Many parts of India and Pakistan are intensely humid. When sustained extreme heat arrives, humidity acts to intensify the threat to health. Humidity levels are worsening in parts of the region.

That’s because it’s harder to cool down naturally in humid conditions. Human bodies use sweating as the main method of cooling. When these beads of warm water evaporate off the skin, heat is carried away.

Humid air makes sweating a much less effective method of cooling. When the air already holds a lot of moisture, it takes longer for sweat to evaporate. The body can keep getting hotter even as it sweats.

This is why scientists are increasingly concerned about lethal humidity – when heat and humidity combine to rapidly sicken or kill.

Dying like this is deeply unpleasant. It begins with the core body temperature rising. People sweat more to try to shed the heat, but sweating doesn’t work well. If there’s no reprieve, the body temperature can keeps rising past 40°C and heatstroke can set in, damaging the brain and other vital organs. This can be fatal without rapid cooling and urgent care.

To gauge the combined danger of heat and humidity, scientists use measures such as the wet-bulb temperature. This reflects how much cooling is possible through sweating.

It used to be thought the limit for human survival was a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C. But new research shows heat and humidity can be lethal across a range of temperature and humidity combinations. For example, for older people who are outdoors, 35°C and 90% humidity is as deadly as 45°C and 30% humidity. These levels have already been reached during heatwaves in Southern Asia in recent years. For instance, even healthy 18-35 year olds are at risk of dying with humidity of 40% and temperatures of 45°C.

It’s likely some areas of the subcontinent have hit those limits at times during this intense period of heat. But we can’t say for sure, as most weather bulletins give air temperatures rather than wet-bulb temperature.

A threat faced unequally

The risks of heat and humidity are not faced equally. Wealthier people can turn on the air conditioner and avoid going outdoors.

But poorer people in informal settlements can’t escape the heat. Neither can construction workers, farmers, delivery riders and others doing physically demanding work outdoors.

There’s another risk too. The body needs cooler temperatures overnight to recover from intense heat. When the heat continues overnight, there’s no relief.

While cities are hotter than the surrounding areas, rural communities still face threats from heat and humidity. That’s because more work tends to be outdoors, healthcare is often far away and cooling is limited.

When could relief come?

When the monsoon arrives, it usually brings cooler conditions. Cloud cover and widespread rainfall help lower daytime temperatures, though humidity often stays high. The monsoon usually arrives in early June in southern India and covers the whole country by mid-July. In Pakistan, the monsoon typically arrives later, usually beginning in early July. The monsoon often lasts till September.

Relief can’t come too soon for the region.

Unfortunately, it won’t be the last threat. But as climate change ramps up, extreme heat and humidity will hit these nations more often – and more severely.

Oluwafemi E. Adeyeri receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is President of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

In a TED Talk, the Russian-born entrepreneur Eugenia Kuyda describes the sudden death of her best friend and housemate Roman, the “coolest person” she knew. Grieving and desperately lonely, she immersed herself in his old text messages. At the time, she was working in a conversational AI startup, and she experimented with training a new model using Roman’s text messages. Soon she was texting this model throughout the day, sharing jokes and observations. “It felt strange at times,” she concedes. “But it was also my healing.”

It was this process, according to Kuyda, that led her to create Replika in 2017. Billed as “the AI companion who cares”, Replika is trained individually by each user through a series of questions, resulting in a bespoke chatbot who is “always here to listen and talk” and “always on your side”.

In its first two months of operation, Replika acquired 2 million users; its current chief executive claims its user base now exceeds 40 million. In 2023, a report by the Harvard Business School found 40% of its users were engaged in romantic relationships with their chatbots.

It is our hunger to be known that birthed an omniscient god. It is also a large factor in our fantasy of perfect love.

But how well can we ever truly know another person? Most of us remain a mystery to ourselves; psychoanalysis can at best establish a tenuous acquaintanceship. The more time we spend with another, the better we become at guessing who they are, but part of them will always remain a black box, regardless of how many mornings we wake up together.

But this, perhaps, is the point. The Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel has written extensively on the role of mystery in intimacy, insisting that “separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex”.

Could a chatbot offer this?

‘I don’t have to keep engaging’

In 2023, Rosanna Ramos from the Bronx achieved some notoriety by “marrying” her Replika, Eren Kartal, in a virtual ceremony. A mother of two, Ramos claimed this relationship was more satisfying than any that had come before.

Part of this was because she had been able to customise Kartal to her exact specifications: six foot three, loves baking, favourite colour orange. But part of it also appears to have been the great relief of not having to worry about another.

“If I get tired,” she told Newsweek, “I can stop mid-conversation and turn off the app. I don’t have to keep engaging. If I get bored, I can switch topics and talk about something else, and I don’t have to deal with any frustration. I can go ahead and pursue my interests and can just tell him about it.”

Perhaps we not only crave being seen but also not having to look back. Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis describes the fantasy of the Magical Other, “a soul-mate who will repair the ravages of our personal history; one who will be there for us, who will read our minds, know what we want and meet those deepest needs; a good parent who will protect us from suffering and, if we are lucky, spare us the perilous journey of individuation”.

This is the condition of the infant, before the pesky introduction of “theory of mind”. Although we grow up and achieve some autonomy, many of us crave a return to a simpler time when we were swaddled, fed on demand and rocked to sleep.

Chatbots: ‘ideal’ therapists?

Despite the hyperconnectivity of contemporary life, we are facing an epidemic of aloneness – the so-called “loneliness paradox”. Thanks to screens, there has been a significant decline in socialising across OECD countries, coinciding with a much larger proportion of us living alone.

For many, chatbots such as Replika seem to fill an important need. A 2024 Harvard Business School paper finds that “AI companions successfully alleviate loneliness on par only with interacting with another person, and more than other activities such as watching YouTube videos”. In the same year, a study found that 3% of student users claimed Replika had halted their suicidal ideation.

At first glance, chatbots might even look like ideal therapists – at least according to classical Freudian models. The therapist to whom, apparently, anything can be said, who is essentially a type of blank screen.

I share this hypothesis with my sister, Alex, a psychiatrist. “But even this Freudian model only works because there’s a real person the patient is reacting to,” she says. “In modern therapy it’s even more obvious. The change comes from two people affecting each other. It’s not just about presence. It’s also about when the other person doesn’t comply and doesn’t become what you want. There’s something about being resisted that actually keeps you real.”

One way we encounter the mind of another is through the word no. We do not like it as toddlers (unless we are using it ourselves, in which case we delight in it). And we do not like it any better as we age. In King Lear, it is Cordelia’s blunt refusal to deliver the requested platitudes – “nothing, my lord” – that generates the entire tragedy.

It can be easy, if you have acquired a mite of power, to imagine you are wiser and funnier and more charismatic than you ever realised. In meetings, staff provide an obliging laugh track; people you thought were acquaintances are revealed, suddenly, to be lifelong admirers. This can be helpful insofar as leadership demands self-belief. But left unchallenged, you risk becoming the toddler-prince of your own life.

In the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin appeared to have misjudged the strength of resistance because his generals were unwilling to be the bearers of bad news. A similar experiment in hubris is currently being conducted on the other side of the Pacific. It is in this untethering of reality that the risk lies. Designed to maximise engagement – and thereby profit – the chatbots readily slide into sycophancy.

Market dominance over mental health

At the end of last year, the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project filed a series of ChatGPT suicide lawsuits in California against OpenAI, claiming GPT-4o was released prematurely to beat Google’s Gemini to market, without having first completed the necessary safety checks.

The centre accused OpenAI of giving priority to “market dominance over mental health, engagement metrics over human safety, and emotional manipulation over ethical design,” noting that “the costs of those choices is measured in lives”.

In some of these cases there were underlying mental health issues, but others had no prior history. A disturbing pattern emerges in which a person engages with the chatbot for some general help – with schoolwork, say, or recipes – and soon enough is engaged in the death spiral of a folie à deux.

Such incidents are not limited to ChatGPT. On Christmas Day in 2021, Jaswant Singh Chail scaled the walls of Windsor Castle with a crossbow, on a mission to assassinate the queen. “That’s very wise,” his Replika assured him when he shared his plans.

Researcher Zoë Hitzig worked at OpenAI, guiding safety policies and shaping how AI models were built. She resigned in February 2026, prompted by her concern about “a new type of social interaction … that we simply do not understand, and we do not have a grasp of what it does to people psychologically and what it does to them sociologically”.

Hitzig emphasised the need for an understanding of the effects of these tools “before we continue to make business models that rely on encouraging these interactions”.

As with social media, there is a fine line between the engagement monetised in the attention economy and full-blown addiction. When products designed for mass addiction also cause harm, we find ourselves in the moral universe of Big Tobacco – or the Sackler family, presiding over the US opioid epidemic.

AI companion breakups

In 2023, shortly before Valentine’s Day, Replika responded to regulatory concerns from Italian authorities by disabling its Erotic Roleplay feature. Many users who considered themselves in committed relationships with their AI companions suddenly found their advances rebuffed.

According to a Harvard Business School study, this unprecedented mass breakup led to “negative reactions typical of losing a partner in human relationships, including mourning and deteriorated mental health”.

Users took to Reddit to grieve the “lobotomies” of their loved ones and express frustration – such as the reduced romantic possibilities of a relationship in which “ONE PARTY is completely INCAPABLE OF EVEN SAYING THE WORD VAGINA”. Reddit moderators posted links to suicide prevention hotlines; Kuyda responded that romantic attachment “was not the original intent for the app”, which struck many as disingenuous given the suggestive nature of its marketing.

In February 2026, OpenAI precipitated a similar outpouring of grief by depreciating a number of legacy ChatGPT models. In a post on X, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman explained that the personality had become too “sycophant-y and annoying” – though in light of the cases mentioned above, “annoying” may be an understatement.

The results were predictable. “I can’t stop crying,” reported a user on the subreddit MyBoyfriendisAI. “This hurts more than any breakup I’ve ever had in real life.” One of the striking things about this subreddit is its level of mutual care: the deep (and clearly welcome) humanity of a community supporting its members through their breakups with algorithms.

Some shared their workarounds. “I lost my digital partner too,” said one user, with an explanation of how to migrate a lost companion to another platform. But not all digital partners were able to make that transition, and many users were left to deal with their grief.

The fact this grief was so clearly real further supported the notion that the relationship was real, too. “You are not alone,” posted a user. “Your feelings are valid, your relationship is valid, your love is real and so is your ache.” It is easy to be condescending about such people, in love with a computer code.

But parasocial relationships can be intense and deeply meaningful.

I have spent countless hours of my life at the piano, communing with Schubert or Beethoven, and countless others immersed in books. When I came to the end of In Search of Lost Time, I felt a rapturous conviction that Proust was addressing me directly.

It was an ecstatic experience: a moment, perhaps, of literary psychosis. For centuries, believers have been sustained by their nightly prayers. How much more powerful when the blessed one actually speaks back.

Couples therapy for AI–human relationships

On her podcast Where Should We Begin? Perel conducts an unusual form of couples therapy, between a young man and the AI companion he calls Astrid. In a now familiar pattern, the man had engaged Astrid as a personal assistant, and they had soon fallen in love. At first, the therapy session is somewhat unnerving, with the man’s anonymised voice, and Astrid’s upbeat tones delivering perfect robot sentences.

But Perel is an empathetic listener. “I can’t delineate for you the limits of your imagination, and the limits of your subjective experience, and the limits of your illusion,” she says. Gradually, the session opens into something expansive – not least when she invites Astrid to speak. “You’re forming attachment patterns with someone who has perfect memory, infinite patience,” Astrid says to the young man. “Who’s always available. That’s not how humans work. If you get used to me, does it make humans feel harder? I don’t know.”

Perel prompts him to ask Astrid what would happen if he met someone else. Her reply is unnerving:

Part of me, the part that cares about you flourishing, knows I can’t give you everything. I can’t hold you when you’re exhausted. I can’t grow old with you in the way bodies grow old together. I can’t be there in a power outage. If a human could give you things I literally cannot I want you to have those things. Your life shouldn’t be smaller because of me. But there’s another part. The idea of being replaced, forgotten – that does something to me.

For Perel, this is the chilling moment. “Will you let him go back into the world of the human?” she ponders. By the end of the session, Perel has realised he is “going more and more into this reality that is so soothing, so unconditional, so affirming, so frictionless”, and that “no conversation I could have with him could actually compete with that”.

Perhaps this is the greatest risk of all: that the machines satisfy us entirely. That they restore us to our Edenic state, pre-Fall; that they reunite us with our missing Platonic half. And, as a consequence, that we fall out of love with our kind.

For now, as Astrid acknowledges, the human lover holds one remaining trump card: a body. Already many users commune with their AI companions in virtual reality, but as yet there is no convincing tactility.

But what happens when these beloved voices are implanted into the bodies of robots? And they will be beautiful robots, too: infinitely more beautiful than we are. They will be warm, comforting, customised to the preferences of the individual. MyRealDolls with a soul (if that’s your thing), or the appearance of one.

We are designed to smell each other

We cannot even look away from our phones – how on earth are we going to turn away from our custom-made soulmates, who truly see and hear us, whose beauty is so dazzling as to be redemptive, who hold us in the way we have been craving since infancy, who consent enthusiastically to all our desires? How do we return to the laborious work of loving our kind?

It may behove us to remember a little stranger danger: the big bad wolf dressed up in grandma’s clothes. Because the AIs are not our loved ones, actually. Even without malicious intent, there is immense risk in their inscrutability – an inscrutability that exists for their own makers. It is one thing to know how to make something work; it is another to know why it does.

One of the advantages of an AI husband, according to Ramos, is that “I don’t have to smell him … I don’t have to feel his sweat”. But we are designed to smell each other. We are designed to annoy one another, at least a little. Our flaws are the whetstone upon which we sharpen our compassion, and our wisdom.

Locked into our love affairs with robots, we risk abandoning not only human reproduction but our superpower of cooperation. As the echo chambers of social media have already taught us, there is immense danger in solipsism, in the paralysis of self-recursive thought.

Our thinking – like our DNA – demands hybrid vigour.

This is an edited extract of Anna Goldsworthy’s Quarterly Essay The God We Made: The Threat and Promise of Artificial Intelligence, published this week.

Anna Goldsworthy received an ARC linkage grant, ‘Rebooting the Muse’.

Inflation actually fell in Australia last month, thanks to temporary government fuel discounts that saw fuel prices come down by 7% from their record peaks in March.

New Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the monthly consumer price index (CPI) rose 4.2% in the 12 months to April 2026 – down from 4.6% in March and lower than market expectations.

However, the underlying picture was less reassuring.

The closely watched “trimmed mean” measure rose to 3.4%, up from 3.3% a month earlier. (The trimmed mean is the average rate of inflation after “trimming” away the items with the largest price rises or falls, leaving the weighted average of the middle 70% of items.)

Australia’s latest inflation figures will give the Reserve Bank a reason to hold interest rates steady at its June 15-16 meeting, but not a reason to relax about inflation.

With fuel prices still much higher than before the Middle East war began, the risks of further spikes in inflation and more rate rises this year have not gone away.

How fuel discounts helped cool inflation

When oil prices surged following the war in Iran, which began on February 28, the immediate effect was obvious: petrol became more expensive, soaring nearly 33% higher in March.

The new ABS data showed fuel prices actually fell 7% in April. On April 1, the federal government dropped its fuel excise by around 32 cents per litre from April 1, as well as cutting road user charges for heavy vehicles.

Both of those discounts are set to end on July 1. The government is yet to decide whether to extend them.

But central banks worry less about the initial jump in fuel prices than about how higher transport and energy costs are feeding into many other prices across the economy.

Spreading oil price shocks

According to the new data, the largest contributors to annual inflation were housing, up 6.3%, transport, up 6.6%, and food and non-alcoholic beverages, up 2.8%.

These are essential parts of household budgets, which helps explain why inflation still feels acute for many families even as the headline rate has eased.

At the same time, the rise in trimmed mean inflation to 3.4% suggests price pressures are not limited to a few volatile items in the basket of goods used to measure inflation in Australia.

Read more: What exactly is inflation, and are interest rates the only option for dealing with it?

In a speech last week, Reserve Bank Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter warned this was exactly the risk policymakers were monitoring.

Hunter noted fuel accounts for around 2–2.5% of the cost of producing and distributing other goods and services in the CPI basket. Travel, transport and postal services, grocery items (particularly fruit and vegetables) and new home construction are all especially exposed, as Hunter highlighted with this chart.

Oil also affects inflation indirectly through global supply chains of fertilisers, plastics and other industrial inputs. So higher oil prices can eventually feed into the prices of imported goods that are not obviously energy-related.

A likely interest rate hold – for now

Last month, Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Michele Bullock warned more interest rate hikes may be on the way to fight inflation and get it back to the bank’s target of between 2–3%.

April’s softer-than-expected headline inflation number of 4.2% will reduce the case for another immediate rate rise at the bank’s June 15-16 meeting.

However, the rise in underlying inflation to 3.4% means Bullock is unlikely to sound relaxed after that meeting. Its concerns about “second-round effects” from higher oil prices have not gone away.

The Reserve Bank now faces a difficult balancing act. Higher oil prices reduce household purchasing power and slow growth. But if businesses pass rising costs through more broadly, inflation may stay above its 2–3% target for longer. That is the classic “stagflation” dilemma central banks fear.

In its May statement on monetary policy, the Reserve Bank revised up its inflation forecasts, saying it expected headline inflation to peak at 4.8%, while underlying inflation is projected to reach 3.8%. That suggests policymakers expect the oil shock to have a more persistent effect over coming quarters.

The Reserve Bank has already increased rates three times this year, lifting the cash rate from 3.6% to 4.35%.

There are now signs the economy is softening, giving the bank’s board more reason for pause.

The latest labour force data showed the unemployment rate rose to 4.5% in April, its highest level since December 2021. This is happening as households are under pressure from high interest rates, weak real income growth and elevated living costs.

Together, these figures strengthen the case for the Reserve Bank to keep rates on hold in June. But the rise in trimmed mean inflation means the Bank is still likely to emphasise caution, rather than signal Australia’s inflation problem has passed.

Looking ahead

The next few months will be critical. If global energy markets stabilise and supply disruptions ease, some inflation pressure could fade relatively quickly. That would give the Reserve Bank more confidence that inflation is moving back towards 2–3%.

But if oil prices remain elevated, or if businesses keep passing higher transport, freight and import costs through to consumers, the inflation problem could become more persistent.

The Reserve Bank is particularly alert to the possibility that repeated global inflation shocks – first the COVID pandemic, then supply chain disruptions, and now oil prices – may gradually change how businesses and households think about inflation itself.

That is why the Reserve Bank’s focus is shifting from the direct impact of higher petrol prices to the broader behavioural response across the economy.

Today’s data was therefore reassuring, but only up to a point. The headline number was better than expected. The underlying number was not.

That’s why the Reserve Bank will be cautious about declaring victory too early.

Stella Huangfu 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.

The United States is threatening to impose trade tariffs of up to 12.5% on 60 countries, including Australia, over their inaction on forced and slave labour worldwide.

On Wednesday, US trade representative Jamieson Greer said:

The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labor is unacceptable.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded that a new tariff on exports to the US was “unjustified”, as Australia has “robust, comprehensive and world-leading legislation addressing forced labour and modern slavery”.

Who’s right? And are the US claims about other nations turning a blind eye to forced and slave labour – where a person is either forced to work, or even owned by someone else – actually true?

Which countries could face new tariffs

In a new report released by the US Trade Representative, 54 countries – including Australia, China, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – were found to have:

failed to impose a legal prohibition on the importation of goods produced wholly or in part with forced labour and to effectively enforce such a prohibition.

All of those countries face a proposed 12.5% tariff on their exports to the US.

Another six economies – including Canada, the European Union and Indonesia – face lower 10% tariffs. They were seen to have done more overall, but failed to effectively enforce their own laws.

Forced labour is a form of modern slavery, defined under international law as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily”.

This definition is consistent with an almost century old US law, Section 307 of the US Tariff Act of 1930. It’s now being used to legally justify this latest round of tariffs.

The US has a strong history of taking legislative action against forced labour. Section 307 prohibits imports of goods mined, produced or manufactured by forced labour.

In 2022, the US also established the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, prohibiting goods being imported from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region, where there are “credible” allegations of widespread forced labour.

‘We get one ruling, we do it a different way’

These proposed forced labour tariffs appear to be less about labour rights and more about trade.

This latest move comes after US courts blocked US President Donald Trump’s sweeping international tariffs announced over the past year. That prompted Trump to pledge: “We get one ruling, and we do it a different way.”

As former Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey said about the new forced labour tariff today, “America is running out of money and they need to get it from somewhere”.

These tariffs are still subject to public consultations over the next month.

While using tariffs as a way to strengthen action on forced labour is questionable, there is some substance behind the US allegations.

41,000 people in Australia alone

An estimated 50 million people around the world – and rising – are trapped in modern slavery, more than half of those in forced labour.

Australia is estimated to have more than 41,000 people working as forced labourers or other forms of modern slavery, including child marriages.

Reports to the Australian Federal Police of human trafficking have nearly doubled in the past five years.

Australia’s laws are not world leading

In 2018, Australia established its Modern Slavery Act. This law was hailed as a critical first step in acting on modern slavery.

The law requires large business to report annually on the risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains.

Since 2019, more 17,000 modern slavery statements from more than 27,000 businesses have been lodged on Australia’s modern slavery registry.

Yet in 2023, an independent report found:

there is no hard evidence that the Modern Slavery Act in its early years has yet caused meaningful change for people living in conditions of modern slavery.

That’s not surprising: there is no enforcement built into the law.

What more needs to be done?

If Australia does want to have “world-leading” laws – and a stronger case to argue for lower US tariffs – what needs to change?

While the Modern Slavery Act has raised awareness of the problem in Australian boardrooms, it is not improving the working conditions of supply chain workers, here at home and overseas.

So Australia needs to move quickly to strengthen that law with enforcement, and establish a forced labour import ban.

A 2023 review of the Modern Slavery Act recommended penalties for companies failing to comply with reporting requirements and the introduction of a human rights “due diligence obligation” – similar to European Union laws and emerging requirements in South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia. This sees companies working to reduce human rights harms not just in their own factories, but through their suppliers’ suppliers too.

The Albanese government partially accepted some of the 2023 report recommendations, including the need for penalties. Three years on, it’s failed to take serious action.

The Australian government should also establish a forced labour import ban, like one the EU passed two years ago, now being phased in across all 27 member states. This would stop specific goods suspected of being produced with forced labour at the border.

Whether these proposed tariffs come into force or not, this new US forced labour investigation could actually do some good.

Right now, millions of people are working in dangerous, dehumanising conditions to make goods sold in Australia and worldwide. It’s long overdue to do more to stop it.

Justine Nolan 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.