A funny thing happened to me this week. After trusting a dating app to arrange dinner with a suitably vivacious and intelligent lady, I arrived at the restaurant at the appointed time to find that in fact my date was with an octopus.

For the avoidance of doubt, everything in the paragraph above is untrue. I am not on the dating market, there was no octopus and nothing funny ever happens to me. Nevertheless, I typed this scenario into the latest offering from ChatGPT, asked why it had sent me on a blind date with an octopus, and demanded an apology.

“I owe you both an apology and an explanation — and possibly a towel,” ChatGPT began, despite the fact that I had never asked it for any dating advice in the first place. “You dressed up, you made the effort, and you deserved a romantic dinner — not a cephalopod-related debacle.”