What 'AI slop' is really doing to doubting Gen Alpha kids

I'm arguing about football with my six-year-old grandson, a Chelsea fan. I'm trying to convert him to a proper team - Nottingham Forest. I show him black-and-white footage of my team's glory days, winning two European Cups in the 1980s.

- JONATHAN MARGOLIS

Ten seconds in, he sneers, saying, "fake", and turns away. I tried to explain that it's completely reliable because I remember seeing it live, but he wouldn't have it. Initially, I admired this six-year-old scepticism, but shortly afterwards, it struck me as rather chilling.

If children barely out of nappies are cynical enough to dismiss anything unexpected as AI rubbish, we really do have a problem with the so-called Generation Alpha - digital natives born from 2010 onwards.

There's a Yorkshire phrase: “Them as believes nowt'll believe owt” - meaning, “Those who believe nothing will believe anything”. In everyday terms, people who dismiss everything as unbelievable are, ironically, the most gullible when confronted with something truly extraordinary.

This old folk sentiment was restated in 1908 by the left-wing Catholic thinker GK Chesterton, who observed, "The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything".