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Hello and welcome to Backchat. If the Nature podcast is a carefully devised scientific strategy,

then Backchat is a toddler throwing chemicals in a beaker. As ever, we've

gathered a dream team of reporters ready and raring to gossip their way through the next 20 minutes or so,

and with any luck, we'll get some science in there too. This month, artificial intelligence is

getting creative. Plus, how to get a story when your contributors keep their cards close to their

chest, and we'll ask

whether space missions should be fully planned out before they're started. I'm Noah Baker,

and this month we've got a particularly international backchat crew for you. In Munich,

Germany, it's Alison Abbott. Hi, Noah. I cover science policy in Europe and Mediterranean countries and things like neuroscience.

And in Colorado, the United States, it's Alex Wittsey.

Good morning. I'm an Earth and Planetary Sciences reporter with a bit of astronomy dashed in there as well.

And next to me here in London is Davidae, Castelvec.

Hello, and I'm here in London, and when I don't cover

black holes, I cover also other things such as physics, chemistry, maths and AI. And speaking

of AI, that's the first thing that's coming up in this show. Artificial intelligences have been

developing fast in recent years, and they're getting really good at

analysing things, stuff like speech, images and video. But now, AIs are being asked to stop

analysing and get generating, creating images based on nothing but text and some training.

Could be useful for astronomers, but what does this mean in the era of fake news?

...