AI gradually undermining our trust in what is genuine

WHILE experts have been quick to warn that the rise of artificial intelligence will transform, if not actually destroy, many aspects of life which we fondly regard as fixed and immutable I don’t recall (though I stand to be corrected) any of them prophesying that the jobs it would steal included organising publicity for village events.

- Phil Wisdom

Around the turn of the year a local am-dram group released a poster for its annual pantomime. Once upon a time, in the golden age before AI, this would have been illustrated and lettered by hand, then photocopied and stuck up in the windows of obliging residents’ homes and businesses: not very professional, perhaps, but personal and possibly even charming in its naïvety. Now it took the form of a social media post: a lurid cartoon, somewhat in the style of a sweet packet from the Seventies, showing a bearded king behind whose throne crouched a hooded figure of malignant mien. The artwork was competent certainly more skilful than your average pen-and-paper effort until you noticed that one of the menacing intruder’s arms turned into a leg at the knee/elbow. It was, of course, Al, the trillion-dollar technology which effortlessly makes mistakes a two-year-old wo