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The thing we have always had over robots is our appreciation of culture. While we can take in a broad palette of experience, relating to people andobjects on an emotional level,all robots have ever been able to see are ones and zeros. We can watch a film and be moved by what we see, but a robot will just bleep INTRUDER ALERT three times and thenexplode.

But things are changing. Algorithmic artbot Shiv Integer takes blueprints for 3D models, mashes them together into new shapes and then uploads them to the internet as new designs. Parliament Live creates transcripts of randomised videos from the House of Commons, then automatically edits them into supercuts of the most-spoken words, which are usually um and ah. And, most worryingly of all, last month Sonyreleased two songs composed through its Flow Machines bot. One of them, entitled Daddys Car, was programmed to mimic the music of the Beatles, hinting at a future where humanitys misery-drenched robotic enslavement is soundtracked by what unmistakably sounds like aCD that came free with an issue of Vox magazine in 1998. Horrifying.

Bots food-shamed me

Last year, Apple named Lark as one of its top apps of 2015. It is a weight-loss bot. According to its promotional video, you tell Lark what you had for breakfast verbally, if you want and it snipes back: Bacon thats the third time this week. It can also be encouraging, saying things such as: You got in a great 26-minute run yesterday. Highfive!

Clearly, this alone makes Lark the worst thing you could possibly have on your phone, but in practice, things seem even worse. In her article I Tried Dieting With a Chatbot. I Hated It, Abigail Ronck reels off a list of accusations at Lark. Its creepy: secretly compiling data about her sleep and activity levels. Its passive-aggressive: remarking on a lack of exercise with a snippy Thats OK, every days a bit different. Its vague: offering generalised advice that doesntseem particularly well-targeted. But, most importantly, after a month of Lark, Ronck failed to lose any weight at all.

Bots are wrecking journalism

Chances are you probably know that bots are killing the customer service industry companies are starting to roll out messenger windows manned by nothing but algorithms, which can answer common questions and respond to grievances faster and more cheaply than their human counterparts but journalism is likely to be next in the firing line.

Two years ago, the Los Angeles Times unveiled Quakebot, which was able to collate, compile and publish reports on local earthquakes before they were even over. The Associated Press uses robots to write and file its corporate earnings reports. The Telegraph has arobot to write its Saturday afternoon football liveblog, complete with text and graphics generated on the fly. On the plus side, the liveblog is tedious made up of nothing but bald fact and extraneous exclamation marks but its only a matter of time before artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated and starts covering more subjects. We cansleep safely in our beds for now, but itwont be long before someone invents a bot that writes endless try-hard, nearly funny listicles about future technologies. When that happens, Ill see you at the jobcentre.