An Indian university is facing severe backlash after a professor presented a Chinese-made robotic dog as the university’s own creation at an AI summit in Delhi.

The controversy started when Neha Singh, a professor at Galgotias University, told state broadcaster DD News that a robot named “Orion” had been developed at the university’s Centre of Excellence.

Her interview gained attention when netizens identified the robot as the Go2 model developed by Unitree Robotics.

The robot used widely in research and education is commercially available for roughly $2,200. Social media users accused the university of passing off an imported product as indigenous innovation, sparking a wave of backlash during the high-profile gathering.

However, following the backlash, Galgotias University denied the claims of ownership of the robot’s hardware, saying the emphasis was on training students in artificial intelligence programming using globally available tools.

Later, the professor also clarified that her comments had been misunderstood, and she may not have communicated transparently.

The incident gained further attention after India’s IT minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, shared the video on his official X (formerly known as Twitter) account before deleting the post.

After the widespread backlash, the university was asked to vacate the exhibition stall, though faculty members said they had received no formal eviction notice.

Getting utterly annoyed with ads while watching YouTube videos is something you must have undoubtedly faced, let’s suppose, but the real deal is how you get around this pain point.

Since the paid YouTube Premium subscription is apparently a costly way to skip those ads, the most likely and off the top of one’s head workaround is deploying an ad blocker, using which is what appears to have started disrupting the YouTube experience, as reported by some users on Reddit.

Some even shared screenshots depicting videos with comments turned off, perhaps owing to the use of ad blockers. This is something Google strongly advises against.

While unfortunate, this happening explicitly conveys that using workarounds gets you out of one problem and straight into another.

To vent out their frustration about the mysterious disappearance of video comments and descriptions, many users took to Reddit and other forums. 

While it is definitely triggered by ad blocker use, even though unconfirmed, some tech geeks nevertheless tried their hand, debating whether Google—being one of the richest corporations—should have this ad thing in place, or it is something that’s needed to keep the platform running and supporting Google’s cash outflow to creators in royalties.

Although chances are good that YouTube is deliberately disabling comments and descriptions whenever it detects an ad blocker in use, another possibility is such tools’ innate tendency to remove descriptions and comments from videos.

What needs to be noted here is that this isn’t the first time ad blockers have become a headache on the platform. Creators last year noticed a sharp decline in view counts. That happened because views from users with ad blockers were not being counted.

Google has even purportedly been resorting to slowing down playback speeds or blocking access straight away for those using ad-blocking tools.

While the absence of comments isn’t the worst thing Google could have done, it would surely hurt the community aspect of YouTube, since comments are crucial for engaging with creators, and many creators rely on ad revenue to support their work.

If at all, it seems like a losing battle for Google, and thus the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between ad blockers and platforms like YouTube will likely continue, with issues popping up and getting fixed, only to resurface again.