How to insert NOW() in DATETIME field

I'm building a seeder to populate the database, but I'm not able to set NOW() in DATETIME fields. How can I do it?

I tried this:

PHP Code:

    public function run() {
        helper('date');
        $now = now();
        
        $data = [
            [
                'user_id' => 1,
                'group_id' => 1,
                'created_at' => $now,
                'updated_at' => $now
            ],
            [
                'user_id' => 1,
                'group_id' => 2,
                'created_at' => $now,
                'updated_at' => $now
            ],
            [
                'user_id' => 2,
                'group_id' => 2,
                'created_at' => $now,
                'updated_at' => $now
            ]
        ];

        $this->db->table('back_user_groups_rel')->insertBatch($data);
    } 


And also with literal 'NOW()' here:

PHP Code:

$now = 'NOW()'; 


None of them works.

now() return int, datetime field is string
So

Code:

$now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', now());

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Thank you!

Here is a helper method I wrote to do just that.

PHP Code:

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------

/**
 * Method for MySQLi NOW()
 */
if ( ! function_exists('now'))
{
    /**
     * -------------------------------------------------------------------
     * now ()
     * -------------------------------------------------------------------
     *
     * @return string
     */
    function now() : string
    {
        return date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
    }
} 


What did you Try? What did you Get? What did you Expect?

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