Not too long ago, I found myself in Switzerland. I had just celebrated a milestone birthday and decided that a suitable way to mark reaching a mildly terrifying age was to view some very impressive mountains up close. And when I say up close, I mean from the safety and comfort of an air-conditioned train carriage.

Most of the two-hour journey was frankly breathtaking: perfectly hydrated green valleys, sugar-dusted mountains and small herds of cows that looked as though they had been grazing on Valium-infused grass. I hadn’t intended to pull out my phone and start filming videos like a basic tourist, but that is what I did. And then, in an even more basic tourist move, I uploaded those videos to my Instagram stories.

Julia Pound shared images from her holiday in the Alps and her followers assumed they were AI-generated. Credit: Julia Pound

My partner, a truly empathic and thoughtful person, has a policy of not posting photographic evidence of holidays on social media because he doesn’t want to make other people feel bad about not being on holiday. (Yes, I know – he is too pure for this world.) I, on the other hand, am a few rungs down on the evolutionary ladder, and have been known to post a small........

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