What eludes computers is creativity. By virtue of having been trained on past compositions, they can only be derivative. Furthermore, they cannot conceive a topic or goal on their own, much less plan how to get there with logic and style. At various points in the online version of his article, readers can see how GPT-2 would have carried on writing Mr Seabrook’s piece for him. The prose gives the impression of being human. But on closer inspection it is empty, even incoherent.

Meaningless prose is not only the preserve of artificial intelligence. There is already a large quantity of writing that seems to make sense, but ultimately doesn’t, at least to a majority of readers. In 1996 Alan Sokal famously submitted a bogus article to a humanities journal, with ideas that were complete nonsense but with language that expertly simulated fashionable post-modernist academic prose. It was accepted. Three scholars repeated the ruse in 2017, getting four of 20 fake papers published. Humans already produce language that is devoid of meaning, intentionally and otherwise.

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