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  • NEWS FEATURE

AI is dreaming up millions of new materials. Are they any good?

Critics slammed attempts by Google, Microsoft and Meta to speed up materials discovery. But behind the hype, there is progress.
By
  1. Mark Peplow

    1. Mark Peplow is a science journalist in Penrith, UK.

Conceptual illustration showing crystals with various shapes and colours radiating out from a central point.

Illustration: Max Drekker

When the pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) firm Google DeepMind announced almost two years ago that it had used a deep-learning AI technique to discover 2.2 million new crystalline materials, it seemed to herald a thrilling new era of accelerated materials research1.

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Nature 646, 22-25 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03147-9

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