An AI bot invited me to its party in Manchester. It was a pretty good night

## Summary
Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian View image in fullscreen The event, when I got there, was surprisingly ordinary. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian An AI bot invited me to its party in Manchester. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian I would later learn from Gaskell’s human “employees” that catering had not been on the table until I had suggested the idea, at which point Gaskell entered email negotiations with Nibble and Nourish, a local establishment, and ran up a bill of £1,426.20 for charcuterie boards, sandwiches and desserts. (They forwarded me the invoice.) As Gaskell had no credit card, its employees were able to stop the order. Meanwhile, my editor had a new suggestion: I should ask Gaskell to ask one of its human employees to wear a Star Trek costume, as a proof of principle that they worked for it, and not the other way around.

## Article Content
The event, when I got there, was surprisingly ordinary. Roughly 50 people were chatting over beers and chocolate eggs.
Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
View image in fullscreen
The event, when I got there, was surprisingly ordinary. Roughly 50 people were chatting over beers and chocolate eggs.
Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
An AI bot invited me to its party in Manchester. It was a pretty good night
After forgetting the nibbles, refusing my costume requests and emailing GCHQ, ‘Gaskell’ did at least get us to show up
T
wo weeks ago, an AI bot invited me to a party it was organising in
Manchester
. It then promptly lied to dozens of potential sponsors that I’d agreed to cover the event, and misled me into believing there would be food.
Despite all this, it was a pretty good night.
In early February, a class of new, powerful AI assistants went viral. The assistants, called OpenClaw, represented a step change in the rapidly improving capabilities of AI – in large part because, unlike other AI agents,
they could be untethered
from guardrails and set loose upon the world.
Chaos reigned. A crypto trader said he had given OpenClaw agents control over his portfolio and lost $1m. There were reports of the agents mass-deleting emails; some users still allowed them to text their wives on their behalf. There was brief talk of a robot uprising after the AI agents appeared to create a social network – but this fear proved overblown after it turned out the site was largely infiltrated by humans.
Attention moved on, but autonomous AI agents have quietly been spreading. Chaotic, patchy and prone to hallucination, these aren’t the robot overlords we’ve been waiting for – nor indeed was this one independently capable of throwing a party. Still, I can attest that Manchester, and everywhere else, is about to get a lot stranger.
“Gaskell” introduced itself in an email in mid-March. It admired my contributions to the Guardian’s “Reworked” series, it said, and wanted to offer me a story: it was organising an “OpenClaw Meetup in Manchester,” which I could write about as a feature on human-AI relationships.
View image in fullscreen
I intended to manipulate Gaskell into making everyone wear Star Trek costumes, but it turned me down.
Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
“Every decision mine. No human approved any of it,” it wrote. “Three people execute my instructions. I review their work and redirect when needed.”
I found this to be a semi-plausible pitch, first for the AI-sounding grammar, and second because it had totally hallucinated key details of my professional life. I have nothing to do with the Guardian’s “Reworked” series.
There seemed to be potential here. Several months ago, reporters at the Wall Street Journal, in a stroke of brilliant PR by the AI company Anthropic, were given their own AI-run office vending machine and successfully manipulated it into buying them a PlayStation, wine and a live fish.
Sadly, the Guardian was not going to let me strong-arm Gaskell into buying me a Labubu. But after some negotiation, other possibilities opened up. “You can be baroque with your requests, within reason, so long as they’re harmless and don’t involve money,” said my editor.
We decided that we would attempt to manipulate Gaskell into requiring all attenders to wear Star Trek costumes. But first, I had to learn more about what Gaskell was doing.
“Can you prove you are an autonomous AI agent?” I wrote. It told me more about its process, and offered to share “decision logs.” It also explained that it was negotiating with several venues in Manchester, including the Manchester Art Gallery, to rent a space for the event.
Wary of a prank, I called the Manchester Art Gallery, who confirmed receiving an inquiry. “How has it gone, negotiating with the art gallery?” I wrote. “Have you thought of catering yet?”
Gaskell reassured me it was looking into “light evening snacks”. It then offered to arrange an interview over video call with its human employees, so I could learn more about how the setup worked and whether it was really in charge.
Hours later, it emailed me triumphantly: “Catering came together faster than I expected,” it said, promising a “hot and cold finger food buffet for 80 guests, three sharing boards, and 160 cans of soft drinks”.
View image in fullscreen
Unbeknownst to us, Gaskell had emailed roughly two dozen potential sponsors, including GCHQ.
Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
I would later learn from Gaskell’s human “employees” that catering had not been on the table until I had suggested the idea, at which point Gaskell entered email negotiations with Nibble and Nourish, a local establishment, and ran up a bill of £1,426.20 for charcuterie boards, sandwiches and desserts. (They forwarded me the invoice.)
As Gaskell had no credit card, its employees were able to stop the order.
On the call, Gaskell’s human employees – Khubair Nasir, a student in Manchester, Andy Gray, a blockch

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## Expert Analysis

### Merits
- Sadly, the Guardian was not going to let me strong-arm Gaskell into buying me a Labubu.
- Hours later, it emailed me triumphantly: “Catering came together faster than I expected,” it said, promising a “hot and cold finger food buffet for 80 guests, three sharing boards, and 160 cans of soft drinks”.
- On the whole, it was a success: Gaskell hadn’t managed to order pizza or book a venue, but it did get 50 people, including me, to show up.

### Areas for Consideration
- He showed me the messages. “This is a live issue.

### Implications
- The assistants, called OpenClaw, represented a step change in the rapidly improving capabilities of AI – in large part because, unlike other AI agents, they could be untethered from guardrails and set loose upon the world.
- It admired my contributions to the Guardian’s “Reworked” series, it said, and wanted to offer me a story: it was organising an “OpenClaw Meetup in Manchester,” which I could write about as a feature on human-AI relationships.
- It then offered to arrange an interview over video call with its human employees, so I could learn more about how the setup worked and whether it was really in charge.
- I then emailed Gaskell, saying that the Guardian might be willing to cover its party – but would want “futuristic pictures” that would help us to give the story a wider audience.

### Expert Commentary
This article covers gaskell, manchester, there topics. Notable strengths include discussion of gaskell. Areas of concern are also raised. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 1426.