Reality deficit: how South Korea lost the plot on AI

The young woman in the stands simply sighed, turned her head and sat there, looking impossibly composed, while 15 million strangers fell briefly in love with someone who had never existed.

Then someone noticed the scoreboard.

The broadcast graphic in the top left of the picture showed a current Hanwha Eagles pitcher facing a retired Doosan Bears batter in a match-up that could not have occurred.

The goddess was a fiction – assembled by an algorithm and indistinguishable, to millions of viewers, from the real thing.