As if 2020 had not been bad enough, right towards the very end of it Facebook released an experiment in ‘interactive storytelling’ called Rival Peak. It was marketed (and obediently reported in the mainstream press) as an “AI”-driven cross of reality TV show and videogame, in which animated contestant characters competed to avoid being voted off by the human audience. What, in a way, could be more zeitgeisty? We had all binged our way through Selling Sunset on Netflix but little new reality content was being filmed during the plague year, for obvious reasons. Maybe artificial intelligence could plug the yawning gap in our lockeddown souls. I for one was thrilled to find out whether it could.