Nicola Jones

Deepfakes are freaky, and everywhere. The ability of AI to quickly and easily plaster one face onto another body, clone a voice, or create an entirely new scene or video, has taken the world by storm. My feature for Nature looks into the major ways scientists are trying to combat the harm.  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02990-y And here's a podcast: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03042-1 Here are some fun facts/stories that didn't make it in: I tried to use DALL-E to generate images for my son's storybook. It was hilariously bad, incorporating weird misunderstandings. Plenty of people are making very realistic fake content out there, but it isn't me! Here for example is "a pencil and watercolour drawing of a penguin fighting a big scary green monster". Huh?   One of the classic errors made by generative AI is that it has trouble producing comprehensible text, as if it doesn't know what letters look like. Here, for example, is a ge...

It has been an active summer for awards for me this year. Thanks to the American Geophysical Union for selecting my Nature news story on carbon isotopes for the David Perlman award in excellence in science writing - news .  Thanks to the American Meteorological society for honouring my Yale E360 feature about microplastics in clouds with their 2024 Award for Distinguished science journalism in the atmospheric and related sciences .  And I am honoured to be listed as a finalist for the Jack Webster award for business journalism in BC for my Hakai magazine feature about kelp farming . (Update: it won!) Thanks to all my editors and sources!

SAVING THE SPOTTED OWL: Z alea's Story   My first book was published in October, 2023. Many thanks to KidsCan press for making this happen.    "When a baby northern spotted owl falls from her tree, she is in danger of becoming a snack for predators. But a team of researchers find her helpless of the forest floor and decide to rescue her. They give the baby owl a name -- Zalea -- and a second chance at life.  An in-depth look at the efforts to save one of North America's most endangered species, Saving the Spotted Owl takes readers on a journey through Zalea's rescue, from a tiny puff of gray fluff to a thriving adult with a family of her own.  Packed with information and stunning illustrations covering everything from egg incubation to owl courtship, this hope-filled true story introduces readers to the importance of biodiversity, the biology of owls. the plight of an endangered species and the extraordinary women working tirelessly to protect them." Buy it now!...