Netflix’s hit show The Circle recently introduced an AI chatbot contestant, a potentially worrying sign of where we’re heading

According to his profile, Max, a contestant on season six of the Netflix reality show The Circle, is 26 years old, brunette and into his Australian shepherd, Pippa. He is a veterinary intern from Pismo Beach, California, and a bit cheeky – “single, but my dog is taken”. He enters into the Circle chat, the fake social media service contestants use to vie for $100,000, posting either as themselves, an embellished version of themselves or a fully fake identity, with ease. “I like this guy! He seems so real,” says Lauren, a fellow twentysomething hoping to build enough online alliances and secure enough positive peer reviews to win, upon seeing Max’s profile.

You just know the producers ate that up, because “Max” is the front for an AI chatbot, a new gimmick to up the ante in this middleweight reality show. The Circle has nowhere near the following of Love Island, but hasn’t sunk to the bottom of the streaming service slush pile – and is the latest example of artificial intelligence’s seemingly inexorable creep into our entertainment. As we continue to determine the line for use of AI in film and TV , from the recent AI-generated promotional posters for A24’s Civil War to, far more egregiously, suspected use of AI-manipulated old “photos” in the Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did, The Circle seeks to wring some low-level fun out of all this existential anxiety . Max, we’re told by the relentlessly cheery host Michelle Buteau, is open-source generative AI trained on previous seasons of the show. He’s essentially a glorified ChatGPT, which already feels like old news in the warp-speed trajectory of widespread AI use, but with fake profile photos provided by the comedian Griffin James .

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From a man with a mullet letting off fireworks to a Slovenian witch, this year’s Eurovision has some of the wildest entries ever. It makes our own entry look rather bland …

The bookies’ favourite, and you can see why. For one thing, it addresses a hot-button social issue – the lyrics deal with Nemo Mettler’s non-binary gender identity – that’s also very Eurovision-friendly. In 1998, Eurovision had a transgender winner, Dana International, 34 years before Kim Petras became the first transgender woman to top the UK and US chart with Unholy. More importantly, it’s that rare thing, an original-sounding Eurovision entry that’s charmingly preposterous rather than straight-up daft – its drum’n’bass-influenced rhythm interrupted by high-drama mock-operatics and a vocal that shifts from rapping to falsetto melodrama. You could imagine it in the UK singles chart, which is something one seldom feels with Eurovision songs.

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Hosted by poet and broadcaster Lady Unchained, Free Flow lets offenders phone in their beats – and one has even recorded a single. We go behind the scenes of the show, which is up for three awards

“ It’s your girl, Lady Unchained, and you’re listening to Free Flow – the instrumental show where we play the beat twice so you can get your bars right!”

It’s a rainy Thursday afternoon and I’ve just arrived at the secret London location of one of the homes of National Prison Radio (NPR) (the others being inside the walls of nearby HMP Brixton, and inside HMP Styal in Cheshire). Lady Unchained , an award-winning poet, author and broadcaster, is sitting in a soundproof room on the other side of a glass window recording her show Free Flow . Like all broadcasts from NPR, it is only available to residents of His Majesty’s prisons.

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Dozens of film professionals fell prey to Hargobind Tahilramani, who tricked them into parting with thousands of dollars. The makers of new documentary Hollywood Con Queen reveal how he was tracked down

In 2017, the New-York-based freelance photographer and film-maker Will Strathman received a thrilling email: the megaproducer Amy Pascal wanted to talk. Her initial message explained that he had been recommended by someone at a fashion brand for whom Strathman has previously worked. On the phone, Pascal described a TV show she planned to pitch to Netflix that would showcase rare beauty spots around the world. Would he be interested in going to Indonesia to create a storyboard for the pilot?

It was a surprising opportunity to get out of the blue. But Strathman was a talented professional and felt he could deliver what Pascal needed. He paid for a flight to Jakarta and worked tirelessly photographing locations, before spending hours each night updating Pascal on the phone. He was exhausted and strapped for cash, but Pascal assured him that he would be reimbursed for all his expenses and rewarded with a healthy day rate.

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The author opens up about being stabbed multiple times in 2022. Plus: Eurovision kicks off it’s finale week with a live semi-final from Sweden. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
“One of the first thoughts I had as I saw him coming at me: ‘Oh, it’s you. So it’s you.’” Salman Rushdie tells his extraordinary version of being viciously stabbed multiple times – including in the eye – at a literary event in 2022, where he was about to discuss the importance of protecting the freedom of writers. He also offers context to make some sense of the attack, while reflecting on how it has changed his relationship with his works. Hollie Richardson

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Oh dear – Ms Carter, née Aldridge, had been flourishing and off the drink. But after a sexual slip, she succumbed to the siren call of a bottle

The Furies who had been circling for Alice Carter, née Aldridge, seemed for a time to have retreated. After the various catastrophes of her alcoholism, she had been flourishing in recent months: off the drink, managing the riding stables, pulling through her mother’s death, and successfully co-parenting her daughter Martha alongside her ex-husband, sexy Chris the farrier. But just as in Greek tragedy a single decision can change the course of a life, so it is in Ambridge. Alice, I suspect, was doomed the very moment she decided to “help” her recent love interest, the awful Posh Harry (not to be confused with her friend, unposh and wholly delightful Harrison the policeman), to extract himself from his own drink problem, a secret affliction of which she became aware only after they had begun to fall hard for each other. At that juncture, Alice did the right thing: she walked away. Still, the situation was not without its complications, notably, an intervention by Harrison the policeman that led to the latter’s almost losing his job, saved, at the last moment, by Harry’s speaking up for him, Harrison, at his disciplinary hearing. Apologies: the Harry-Harrison medley, or muddle, is not of my making.

The irony! It was Harry’s flash of decency at that hearing that weakened Alice’s resolve. Since then, she has been taking his befuddled midnight telephone calls, accompanying him to support groups, edging him towards rehab, while all the time putting impossible strain on herself, which involved messing up a veterinary inspection of the stables, lying to everyone about why she’s so distracted, palming off Martha on to various family members, a bit of a sexual slip with Harry and – of course, inevitably – succumbing to the siren call of a drink. The fateful moment was articulated wordlessly, through a series of incredibly florid sounds: cupboard door opening, deep breath for the stash retrieval from the back, chinking of glass against work surface, throat clearing, sighing, screw cap removal, pouring, deep breathing and – at last – full-on glugging. Poor Alice.

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Ten men, including a boxer and an ex-marine, make allegations of sexually inappropriate behaviour against the star who was once box office dynamite. Then this documentary goes even further

In Kevin Spacey’s written right-of-reply statement at the end of Spacey Unmasked, he reminds the world that every criminal and civil court case accusing him of sexual assault has been resolved in his favour. He has a right to reiterate that fact. Public opinion, however, has long since turned against an actor who was one of the most acclaimed in the world when he won Oscars for The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, but who has been an industry pariah since Netflix fired him from House of Cards in 2017. This new two-part documentary details further allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

Spacey Unmasked is more, though, than a blizzard of marks on one side of an is-he-isn’t-he ledger. Viewers who are minded to believe what is alleged in these interviews are given a picture not just of whether an A-list actor came to abuse his position, but how.

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Gruesome twosome Canning and Shane throw poor wee Tommy to the lions to ‘get results’. But they should know better than to mess with one of this loyal lot

Canning went off-piste and Tommy paid the price. Here’s all the intel on the Shakespearean-titled fourth episode, The Stamp of Nature …

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Union calls for end to politicians’ interference in state broadcaster amid debate over censorship

An Italian union has called for political parties to be “eliminated from Rai” as journalists with the public broadcaster went on strike in protest against the “suffocating control” allegedly being wielded by Giorgia Meloni ’s rightwing government over their work.

The ruling coalition has been accused of influencing programming, including censoring themes that are not in tune with its rightwing stance.

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