Are we living in the most oppressive timeline or the most fascinating one? It is hard to tell. One minute, technological breakthroughs take your breath away; the next, mankind does something so stupid you start worrying about its future. Before introducing the technological bit, let me inform you that this piece is not about tech development - nor the fascinating twist to which it owes its title.

In this climate, it is hard to talk about anything other than the India-Pakistan conflict. But technology provides an interesting trigger. You will see.

Last week, Google launched Veo 3, its most advanced AI video generator. Its biggest highlight is that it creates videos with synchronised audio, including dialogue, sound effects and music. This is a significant step-up from Veo 2 and OpenAI's Sora, which lacked native audio and had lower overall quality and control.

Seeing is believing, and it is the kind of technology that can instantly kill the entire entertainment industry. Forget about actors, directors, special effects artists and musicians. Just feed text and pictures relating to a script through a prompt and watch it come true.

If, for some reason, you feel that the outcome is subpar, take solace in the fact that the previous model, Veo 2, was released only six months ago. And who knows what Sora and other AI brands will come up with next.

What intrigued me the most while going through various generated videos was a series of clips someone with remarkable humour and a sense of irony had produced. The realistic characters in those clips can be heard and seen rejecting what they call the "prompt theory" — the idea that they are created by........

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