The Prompt

The last 12 months have seen an astonishing acceleration in the pace and intensity with which tech firms are developing more sophisticated AI models. As recently as 2023, 100 leading figures in the industry, including Elon Musk, put their names to an open letter calling for a moratorium on development while the risks of the technology were assessed. That caution has now been discarded as the tech giants compete to achieve AGI, or artificial general intelligence, the point at which AI systems become as capable as – or smarter than – highly qualified humans. Research into the potential negative consequences of AGI has fallen behind, prompting some in the industry to warn of dire scenarios. Others dismiss this as ‘doomerism’ and insist that AGI will usher in a new era of prosperity and progress.

There is a vanguard of professionals, both within the big companies and in watchdog organisations, who research what AI is actually capable of. Three years after the best-known public-facing AI, ChatGPT, was released, these evaluators have produced a large body of evidence, some of which appears to confirm that misuse of AI could lead to outcomes as worrying as anything in the doomerist imagination.

The UK’s Online Safety Act came into force in July 2025. Although it has been hailed as a breakthrough in child protection, and is being replicated elsewhere, there are concerns that the rapid pace of AI development makes enforcement of the Act more difficult. For many months, Grok, the AI owned by Elon Musk, repeatedly failed to take down its nudification tool, which enabled users to create naked images of women and children. Musk finally relented this week when global regulators, including the UK government and Ofcom, threatened to block access to both Grok and Musk’s broader platform, X. Despite this, Musk and other Silicon Valley free-speech fundamentalists remain openly contemptuous of any government-level attempts to constrain them.

This is the background to ‘The Prompt’, a taut and compelling reactive drama that explores how some in the tech sector are now painfully conflicted about potential misuses of the pioneering AI models they helped to create.