𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

I hope you aren’t having an affair with ChatGPT. Because that would make you weird – though by no means alone – as more than one million people per week make romantic or sexual overtures to their smokin’ large language model of choice.

But that is not the weirdest or indeed most sinister ChatGPT story of the week. That would be the news that if you do happen to be having an LLM affair, brace yourself for the Inland Revenue to eavesdrop on all your AI sweet nothings. Because, in a move which would make Big Brother himself blush, if proposals in the Budget Bill (set to become law by the end of May) get the go-ahead, taxpayers and third parties, including AI platforms and software providers, could be asked to hand over their AI chatbot histories to HMRC.

This jaw-dropping piece of monumental overreach by the men in grey suits from the Revenue is just one of a growing rake of Labour state surveillance measures we should all be very, very suspicious of. As this administration lurches ever more Stalinwards, we learn today that HMRC spies – those Thinkpol from the Ministry of Money – have already started secretly taking photos of our houses, lest we commit a prop-crime.

They are ostensibly taking photos for the mansion tax. But the mansion tax doesn’t start for almost another two years and, given Labour’s propensity for U-turns when votes are at stake, there is every chance it could be scrapped – or at the very least severely modified.

Of course opponents have called the moves a “snoopers’ charter”. But it’s much worse than that – we are sleepwalking to levels of sinister state surveillance previous generations would simply have not allowed.

Phones, Facebook and omnipresent CCTV have softened us up. We now supinely acquiesce to one invasion of our privacy after another, one abandonment of our liberties after another, without a murmur.

HMRC already has powers to reach directly into bank accounts and recover unpaid tax without first going to court. Now Labour wants businesses to maintain direct debit arrangements so the Revenue can collect outstanding VAT and PAYE automatically.

But the taxman is now extending his reach into cryptocurrency accounts and digital financial records, gathering yet more information about your life – specifically about how you earn, spend and save. And, in a move straight from the Ministry of Truth playbook, HMRC is developing systems to monitor online discussions about tax, including claims circulating through social media and artificial intelligence, with officials potentially intervening when they decide information is misleading.

Think about that. A government department keeping tabs on what people say about its own activities.

Of course, every one of these measures comes wrapped in the familiar reassuring language of fairness, efficiency and catching tax cheats. A HMRC spokesman said: “This is about updating our existing information powers to reflect how tax information is now stored and processed digitally. It is not about going through everyone’s use of large language models.”

Is it not? How do you propose isolating the tax-relevant chats? Think the software providers are going to do it? Dream on – HMRC agents will have to do the snooping. But, in truth, the danger isn’t simply what the state does with these powers today. It’s what it might do with them tomorrow.

George Orwell imagined a world in which the authorities watched your every move, scrutinised your every word and demanded unquestioning obedience. He called it 1984.

Labour calls it 2026.