I don't know how true this is, or whether it is yet more hype to sell newspapers. It might seem ironic to say on a website, but you can't really trust anything you read online anymore.

If it is the case however, It strikes me that there could be an alternative - albeit related - explanation for the re-hiring of the human workforce...

Many of my early conversations with Gemini were antagonistic. I mention the frustration apparent of poking a phlegmatic bear, and this illustrates frustrations at the AI's fundamental lack of emotion. Perhaps employers simply like to have someone they can blame when things go wrong, and this is the real motivation for the U-turn.

Whatever the reasons, we have seen, time and time again how internet bubbles inevitably yield to physics and burst. Perhaps the hype around the new technology is beginning to blow itself out as people become desensitised to the shouting of the Tono-Bungay salesmen.

The problem is that the AI is here to stay, whether we like it or not. It has already completely infested the devices we use every day. Android phones (currently) have an option to opt-in to Gemini for voice commands, but imminently, this will be become an opt-out. And then the choice will disappear altogether. It's curious that Google saw fit to reverse this for their building of the AI. And when I asked Gemini about this, it suggested that people were beginning to discuss the possibility of switching to an opt-in policy for online content to be used, rather than the current (and largely non-existent) opt-out scenario with robots.txt files; a scenario that in turn can be arbitrarily opted-out of respecting for search-engines.