The rise of intelligent adaptive metasurfaces

Abstract Modern-day data science, together with physical science, are reshaping the landscape of artificial electromagnetic media, metasurfaces, on a scale not seen. Such interaction excels in computationally intensive tasks and real-world applications, such as inverse design, spectral analysis, autonomous devices, and neuromorphic computing. Here we foreground the rise of data-driven metasurfaces that are renovating our understanding and utilization of metasurfaces, moving away from human-based control towards automatic control based on real-time detection and updates of application requirement. To make the most of these emerging opportunities, we also comment on the perspectives of intelligent adaptive metasurfaces.