PM’s aide ‘asked ChatGPT for help with cost-of-living speech’ on train

Detailed summary

Andy Burnham delivering his speech at the Welsh Labour conference (Picture: Ryan Jenkinson/Getty Images) An aide to Andy Burnham has been accused of asking ChatGPT to tweak one of…

An aide to Andy Burnham has been accused of asking ChatGPT to tweak one of the prime minister’s speeches – while sipping prosecco on a train.

The unnamed Downing Street speechwriter was photographed reading through the AI chatbot’s suggestions for making the PM’s words more ’emotive’.

According to the Mail on Sunday, the pictures were taken on the 5.03pm train from London Euston to Holyhead on Friday as Burnham and his team headed to the Welsh Labour conference with a bottle of bubbly.

An image of the aide’s phone screen shows ChatGPT providing feedback on a passage criticising the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

The lines commented on Thatcher’s impact on ‘working men’s clubs, choirs and other social infrastructure’ in the 1980s.

‘I prefer the second [passage]. It moves from the miners to their families to the wider community, showing how the experience of industrial work created bonds well beyond the workplace,’ the bot said.

Burnham’s speech was later delivered at the Welsh Labour Conference in Llandudno, in northern Wales.

The PM said Thatcher ‘shattered the way of life for communities up and down Britain’ with ‘mines closed, factories closed, steelworks silenced’.

He did not use the specific passage seen in the pictures taken of the aide’s phone.

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