‘AI’ is now a meaningless term — thanks, Cooler Master thermal paste

AI is being shoved into everything now, from laptops to kitchen appliances to celebrity gossip news. (No, none of that is an exaggeration.) The term is so ubiquitous that it’s fast becoming meaningless, just like “performative” or “green.”

So, I’d like to thank Cooler Master for taking the plunge and officially putting a bullet in AI as a marketing adjective with its new thermal paste.

Yup, Cooler Master is advertising a thermal paste—the goo compound you squirt between your CPU and a cooler—as somehow infused with artificial intelligence. Or, at least, that’s the implication.

It’s called Cryofuze 5, which the company is advertising on its Chinese site as “AI competitive thermal paste” (according to the Google translation). The English manual, which for some reason downloads as a PowerPoint presentation, makes no such claim.

Further reading: What’s the right amount of thermal paste for your CPU?

As Tom’s Hardware points out, the more immediately relevant factor for PC builders might be that the new formula comes in six different colors (red, yellow, green, blue, black, and white). Why would you need to color-coordinate something that’s never supposed to see the light of day once installed? I couldn’t say, but then again I’m the boring guy who turns off all the RGB LEDs on his motherboard.

Cooler Master’s promo materials also say that the paste has “exceptional thermal conductivity” with operating temperatures between -50 and 240 degrees Celsius. (That’s 464 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point the solder in your motherboard would be melting.)

It’s also “anhygroscopic,” a term that Wiktionary helpfully informs me means “tending to remain dry or anhydrous.” Practically, it means that it doesn’t have much water and it’s easy to apply and clean up.

For me, I’m willing to call this the point in time when “AI” ceases to mean anything when applied to marketing. Implying that generative AI was approaching the realm of science fiction a la Commander Data or GladOS was already a pretty huge reach. And highlighting NPU features such as background blurring as a hallmark of an entirely new kind of computer is mildly insulting to the intelligence of consumers. But with the Cryofuze 5, Cooler Master has officially taken AI past the ridiculousness event horizon.

So, thanks, Cooler Master. I sincerely appreciate your willingness to achieve this inevitable milestone. I look forward to buying AI-infused McNuggets with artificially intelligent fries on the side. And no, that’s not an exaggeration either.