Boris Johnson confesses: He's fallen for ChatGPT

After a string of marriages and innumerable affairs, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson has come clean about his new squeeze.

"I love ChatGPT," the blond-mopped Brexiteer told Al Arabiya English earlier this week.

Famous for making stuff up and going on flights of fancy, Johnson served as prime minister from July 2019 until September 2022, when he was ousted after misleading colleagues over a scandal involving his government's deputy chief whip, the party disciplinarian. OpenAI's ChatGPT is also prone to making statements that turn out not to be entirely true.

Adopting a strange affected accent in his TV interview this week, Johnson said: "I love AI, do you use AI? Absolutely, I use ChatGPT. I love ChatGPT. I love it. ChatGPT is fantastic."

When pressed on what he used the large language model (LLM) for, the former MP confessed he was "writing various books."

He also said he liked to "just ask questions," mainly, it would seem, because he wanted to hear the robot say how clever his questions were.

"'You agree, your brain, you're excellent. You have such insight.' I love it," Johnson told the interviewer.

Asked whether Johnson tells the truth, ChatGPT was a little circumspect.

"It's complicated. Short answer: sometimes yes, but there's quite a lot of evidence he often does not tell the full truth, or is misleading, or makes mistakes. Whether those are deliberate lies or exaggerations or misunderstandings is often in dispute," it said.

Early in his career as a journalist, Johnson was dismissed from The Times newspaper for making up quotes. After becoming an MP in 2001, he was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet for misleading Conservative opposition leader Michael Howard over allegations that Johnson had had an extramarital affair.

Johnson was also a key figure in the successful Brexit campaign, Vote Leave, which became the target of criticism for saying on the side of its big red campaign bus: "We send the EU £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead." Critics argued the figure was misleading because it only described the gross payment to the EU and did not account for the UK's significant rebate, investment by the EU into the UK, or the overall economic benefits of being in the EU single market.

However, a case alleging Johnson had lied in making the "£350 million" claim was later thrown out.

ChatGPT and other LLM-based chatbots have been prone to hallucinations - more accurately described as fabrications - which include producing fake bibliographies, creating non-existent figures, making errors in mathematics, and repeatedly claiming there are three Bs in "blueberry."

Perhaps the two deserve each other. Afterall, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman announced plans to allow the chatbot to generate erotic content for adult users. ®