Tattoos you can turn on and off

sleepyguy

Your auto-immune system does not like ink.

xgulfie

So much hype in the article and in the paper for it being "programmable" when it's just... UV reactive? Like, cool but calm down > In outdoor daylight conditions, including shade, the UV content of incident sunlight is sufficient to activate PhotoTat to a photostationary state https://www.cell.com/matter-light/fulltext/S3117-5848(26)001...

silicon3383

Does it turn the lymphedema off too?

teucris

Instead of focusing on tattoos, could we work on this being used for bistable displays, like e-ink but using light pulses to transition each pixel?

Retr0id

A cool concept, but regular daylight making it disappear again sounds pretty annoying.

phyzome

Despite the limitations, that is dope as heck.

accountrequired

Johnny Mnemonic meets Blade Runner vibe: A duo is assigned to hunt a network of data smugglers who use "toggle tattoos" to transport encrypted secrets with zero knowledge. Starring Jason Statham and Liam Neeson. Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Razengan

An alternative to "customizable/dynamic fashion" like this would be tags/markers on people's clothes that are invisible to the naked eye but can be detected by AR glasses, making you appear to have different clothing, accessories, tattoos etc to people wearing those glasses. But man none of the major company execs have a hint about any of the cool applications of AR sigh

jogu

This probably has some cool applications for magicians to do unique tricks where certain things appear on their skin.

flir

Regardless of the actual tech here, "he turned his tattoos off" has "the door dilated" vibes. Very cool.

tiku

Why not have e-ink in your skin..