404 Media – The NIH Is Capping Research Proposals Because It’s Overwhelmed by AI Submissions Samantha Cole · Jul 21, 2025 at 1:19 PM Starting on September 25, NIH will only accept six “new, renewal, resubmission, or revision applications” from individual principal investigators or program directors in a calendar year. Earlier this year, 404 Media investigated AI used in published scientific papers by searching for the phrase “as of my last knowledge update” on Google Scholar, and found more than 100 results—indicating that at least some of the papers relied on ChatGPT, which updates its knowledge base periodically. And in February, a journal published a paper with several clearly AI-generated images, including one of a rat with a giant penis. In 2023, Nature reported that academic journals retracted 10,000 “sham papers,” and the Wiley-owned Hindawi journals retracted over 8,000 fraudulent paper-mill articles. Wiley discontinued the 19 journals overseen by Hindawi. AI-generated submissions affect non-research publications, too: The science fiction and fantasy magazine Clarkesworld stopped accepting new submissions in 2023 because editors were overwhelmed by AI-generated stories.
My letter to reps:
Someone needs to put a stop to the AI slop. If even the government is being overwhelmed by AI generated garbage sent to the NIH , don’t you think it’s time you did something to regulate this stuff?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.