Doctors look at an analysis of cellular data as part of their research into using artificial intelligence to repurpose existing drugs to fight rare diseases, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in February 2025. There is concern some apps that claim to offer medical guidance may not have an adequate data set to accurately asses information their users submit. Artificial intelligence is shaking up industries from software and law to entertainment and education. And as physicians like Dr. Cem Aksoy are learning, it's posing special challenges in medicine as patients tap the technology for advice. Aksoy, a medical resident at a hospital in Ankara, Turkey, says an 18-year-old patient and his family recently panicked after the young man was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on his left leg.

As movies become more CGI-focused, filmmakers have to be increasingly adept at "compositing" - the process of merging foreground and background images, like placing actors on top of planes, or planets, or into fictional worlds like Black Panther's Wakanda. Making these images look realistic isn't easy. Editors have to capture the subtle aesthetic transitions between foreground and background, which can be especially difficult for intricate materials like human hair that people are used to seeing look a certain way. "The tricky thing about these images is that not every pixel solely belongs to one object," says Yagiz Aksoy, a visiting researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). "In many cases it can be hard to determine which pixels are part of the background and which are part of a specific person." Getting these details right is tedious, time-consuming and difficult for anyone but the most seasoned of editors.