What happened
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has accused Nigel Farage of wanting to loosen Britain’s firearms laws, warning that schools would need to prepare pupils for mass shootings under a Reform UK government. Addressing his party’s conference in Bournemouth, Davey tied the warning to Farage’s past remarks describing the handgun ban imposed after the Dunblane massacre as “kneejerk” and “ludicrous”.

Who said what
Davey said Farage was pushing Britain towards “Trump’s America”, citing threats to the NHS, fracking and social media regulation. “Where gun laws are rolled back, so schools have to teach our children what to do in case of a mass shooting,” he told activists. Reform sources dismissed the charge as “total madness”.

Still, while Davey “made it clear what he is against”, he offered “little indication of what he stands for”, said The Times’s editorial board. Yet this could work in his favour, said Peter Walker in The Guardian, given that when voters are asked which parties they could potentially back in the future, “the Lib Dems are cited most often”. This broad appeal “could allow Lib Dem candidates to draw in votes from a varied coalition of people willing to vote tactically to stop Reform”.

What next?
Davey used his speech to appeal to disaffected Conservatives, urging millions of voters to join his party to stop “racism, extremism and chaos” from defining Britain’s future.

What happened
Amazon is to shut all its Fresh stores in Britain, less than five years after launching the till-free service. The “just walk out” technology was billed as a “new convenience grocery format”, but its shops, all of which are located in and around Greater London, have failed to win over customers.

Who said what
In truth, “the concept has struggled as demand for contactless shopping waned at the end of the coronavirus pandemic”, said The Guardian. Amazon had already scaled back plans to expand its Fresh business in the UK, with the company saying it had “made the difficult decision” to close all of its stores after a “thorough evaluation of business operations and the very substantial growth opportunities in online delivery”.

What next?
Five of the 19 Fresh stores will be converted into Whole Foods Market shops, which Amazon acquired in 2017 and has slowly looked to integrate into its wider business. Up to 250 jobs are believed to be at risk, although the tech company has said it plans to offer workers new roles in other departments.

With forecasts that artificial intelligence will steal our jobs and take over the world, you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s playing God – and on some new apps that’s exactly what it’s doing.

A “slew” of religious apps are encouraging “untold millions” to “confess to AI chatbots”, according to science site Futurism, and some of the digital services “claim to be channelling God himself”.

Apple’s App Store is literally “teeming” with religious apps. One of them, called Bible Chat, claims to be the No. 1 faith app in the world, with more than 25 million users. “Hallow, a Catholic app, beat Netflix, Instagram and TikTok for the No. 1 spot in the store at one point last year,” said The New York Times.

Bible Chat’s website insists that its AI was “trained exclusively” and developed with “guidance” from pastors and theologians. But smaller outfits have trained chatbots to go a step further and specifically “respond as if they were a god”, which some people feel is “sacrilegious”.

In the US about 40 million people have left churches in the past few decades, so these apps may “lower the barrier to re-enter spiritual life”. In Britain “there’s a whole generation of people who have never been to a church or synagogue”, said Rabbi Jonathan Romain from Maidenhead Synagogue, so spiritual apps can be “their way into faith”.

These chatbots are “generally ‘yes men’”, said Ryan Beck, chief technology officer at Pray.com, but he doesn’t feel that this is a problem. “Who doesn’t need a little affirmation in their life?”