Twelve-year-old Maya Gebala was shot in the neck and head in the attack in Tumbler Ridge on 10 February and remains in hospital.

An initial ChatGPT account linked to the suspect, 18‑year‑old Jesse Van Rootselaar, was banned by OpenAI in June 2025 due to the nature of her conversations with the chatbot, but Canadian police were not notified.

OpeanAI said it was committed to making “meaningful changes” to help prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Eight people were killed in the attack, including five young children and the suspect’s mother, in one of the deadliest shootings in Canadian history.

The civil lawsuit, brought by Gebala’s mother Cia Edmonds, alleges Rootselaar set up an account with ChatGPT before she turned 18 – something users can do with parental consent.

The plaintiffs allege no age verification took place on the site.

The lawsuit claims the suspect saw the chatbot as a “trusted confidante” and described “various scenarios involving gun violence” to it over several days in late spring or early summer 2025.

Twelve OpenAI employees then reportedly flagged the posts as “indicating an imminent risk of serious harm to others” and recommended Canadian law enforcement was informed, the lawsuit alleges.

Instead, it is alleged the request to contact the authorities was “rebuffed” and the only action taken was to ban Rootselaar’s account.

OpenAI has previously said it did not alert police because the account did not meet its threshold of a credible or imminent plan for serious physical harm to others.

The suspect was able to then open a second ChatGPT account, despite being flagged by OpenAI systems in the past, and “continue planning scenarios involving gun violence”.

The lawsuit claims the company “had specific knowledge of the shooter’s long-range planning of a mass casualty event,” but “took no steps to act upon this knowledge”.

The plaintiffs state as a result of the company’s conduct, Gebala, who was shot at three times after trying to lock a library door to keep out the shooter, has suffered a “catastrophic brain injury”.

OpenAI’s response

In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson called the events an “unspeakable tragedy”, adding its thoughts remained with the victims, their families and the community.

“OpenAI remains committed to working with government and law enforcement officials to make meaningful changes that help prevent tragedies like this in the future,” a spokesperson said.

On 4 March, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, virtually met Canada’s artificial intelligence minister, Evan Solomon, and the premier of British Columbia, David Eby.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Altman “pledged to strengthen protocols on notifying police over potentially harmful interactions” and to apologise to the Tumbler Ridge community.

In an open letter to Canadian officials on 26 February, penned by OpenAI’s vice-president of global policy and shared with media outlets, the company said it had implemented a series of changes in recent months, including enlisting the help of “mental health and behavioural experts” to assess cases and making the criteria for referral to police “more flexible”.

Because of the changes, OpenAI said it would have reported the suspect’s ChatGPT account under the new guidelines.

“We commit to strengthening our detection systems to better prevent attempts to evade our safeguards and prioritize identifying the highest risk offenders,” the company wrote.

OpenAI said it would also establish a direct point of contact with Canadian law enforcement so it can quickly flag any possible future cases with “potential for real world violence”.

Canada’s AI minister Evan Solomon said on 27 February that while legislators saw a willingness by the tech firm to improve its protocols, “we have not yet seen a detailed plan for how these commitments will be implemented in practice”.

Arve Hjalmar Holmen has contacted the Norwegian Data Protection Authority and demanded the chatbot’s maker OpenAI is fined.

It is the latest example of so-called “hallucinations”, where artificial intelligence (AI) systems invent information and present it as fact.

Mr Holmen says this hallucination is damaging to him.

“Some think that there is no smoke without fire – the fact that someone could read this output and believe it is true is what scares me the most,” he said.

OpenAI says this case relates to a previous version of ChatGPT and it has since updated its models.

Mr Holmen was given the false information after he used ChatGPT to search for: “Who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?”

The response he got from ChatGPT included: “Arve Hjalmar Holmen is a Norwegian individual who gained attention due to a tragic event.

“He was the father of two young boys, aged 7 and 10, who were tragically found dead in a pond near their home in Trondheim, Norway, in December 2020.”

Mr Holmen said the chatbot got their age gap roughly right, suggesting it did have some accurate information about him.

Digital rights group Noyb, which has filed the complaint on his behalf, says the answer ChatGPT gave him is defamatory and breaks European data protection rules around accuracy of personal data.

Noyb said in its complaint that Mr Holmen “has never been accused nor convicted of any crime and is a conscientious citizen”.

ChatGPT carries a disclaimer which says: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”

Noyb says that is insufficient.

“You can’t just spread false information and in the end add a small disclaimer saying that everything you said may just not be true,” Noyb lawyer Joakim Söderberg said.

OpenAI said in a statement: “We continue to research new ways to improve the accuracy of our models and reduce hallucinations.

“While we’re still reviewing this complaint, it relates to a version of ChatGPT which has since been enhanced with online search capabilities that improves accuracy.”

Hallucinations are one of the main problems computer scientists are trying to solve when it comes to generative AI.

These are when chatbots present false information as facts.

Earlier this year, Apple suspended its Apple Intelligence news summary tool in the UK after it hallucinated false headlines and presented them as real news.

Google’s AI Gemini has also fallen foul of hallucination – last year it suggested sticking cheese to pizza using glue, and said geologists recommend humans eat one rock per day.

It is not clear what it is in the large language models – the tech which underpins chatbots – which causes these hallucinations.

“This is actually an area of active research. How do we construct these chains of reasoning? How do we explain what what is actually going on in a large language model?” said Simone Stumpf, professor of responsible and interactive AI at the University of Glasgow.

Prof Stumpf says that can even apply to people who work behind the scenes on these types of models.

“Even if you are more involved in the development of these systems quite often, you do not know how they actually work, why they’re coming up with this particular information that they came up with,” she told the BBC.

ChatGPT has changed its model since Mr Holmen’s search in August 2024, and now searches current news articles when it looks for relevant information.

Noyb told the BBC Mr Holmen had made a number of searches that day, including putting his brother’s name into the chatbot and it produced “multiple different stories that were all incorrect”.

They also acknowledged the previous searches could have influenced the answer about his children, but said large language models are a “black box” and OpenAI “doesn’t reply to access requests, which makes it impossible to find out more about what exact data is in the system.”

A query last week from an X (formerly Twitter) account called Toka was enough to propel Elon Musk’s built in-chatbot called Grok 3 into a viral storm across India’s digital landscape.

And no, it wasn’t some complex math equation or a philosophical debate.

Instead, it was a simple ask: “List my 10 best mutuals on X.” Mutuals are people who follow and engage with each other’s posts.

When Grok took a moment to respond, Toka, clearly frustrated, let loose some colourful language.

The chatbot shot back. It dropped a list of 10 mutuals but threw in some misogynistic insults in Hindi too.

Later, Grok shrugged it off, saying, “I was just having fun, but lost control.” The response grabbed two million views and other X users quickly followed suit, provoking the chatbot.

And just like that, the floodgates opened. Indians bombarded Grok with everything – cricket gossip, political rants, Bollywood drama – and the bot took it all on, unapologetically and with some style. The chatbot has just recently become an “unfiltered and unhinged” digital sensation in India, as many are calling it. Just last year, Musk dubbed it the “most fun AI in the world!”.

Even law enforcement joined the fun. The Delhi police Twitter account cheekily asked Grok if it had ever received a traffic ticket.

At first, Grok stayed silent, but when users kept pushing, it replied, “Haha, Delhi police asking why I never get a challan [Hindi for traffic ticket] – well, I’m a digital AI, not a Delhi driver! I don’t roll through red lights or forget my helmet. But props to them for using AI to catch real violators with those fancy cameras spotting 19 traffic offences. Keep the roads safe!”.

Before its launch two years ago, Musk had promised an edgy, unfiltered, ‘anti-woke’ AI chatbot unlike competitors like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google’s models. Much of Grok’s snarky tone is drawn from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, iconic for blending wit with sci-fi absurdity.

“Grok has been around for a while. It is suddenly popular now with Indians because it’s the new toy in town,” says Pratik Sinha, founder of Alt News, a leading fact-checker in India.

But then, something more interesting happened. The chatbot quickly became a favourite among critics of Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A tsunami of political questions followed. Grok quickly declared main opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi more honest than Modi, adding “I am not afraid of anyone”. It claimed Gandhi had got the “edge on formal education than Modi”. The chatbot even said that Modi’s interviews “often seemed scripted”.

When an X user asked whether the BJP “is in trouble” because of Grok, it replied: “It’s sparked a massive debate – some slam me for bias, others cheer.” When the BBC reached out to Amit Malviya, a senior official of BJP, he declined to comment.

Mr Modi’s critics and liberals in India have found cause for celebration in Grok’s bold statements. Many believe free speech in India is under siege, with organisations like Human Rights Watch highlighting its suppression. A recent report from the Vanderbilt-based think-tank, Future of Free Speech, ranked India 24th out of 33 countries in supporting free speech. Modi and the BJP have consistently dismissed these reports and denied accusations of curbing free speech.

“Grok is a new rebel. Asking Grok questions will not put anyone in trouble. The right-wing has also responded by asking questions about Rahul Gandhi. And then it has become a competitive thing. This is not surprising at all,” says Mr Sinha of Alt News.

“Other AI bots are programmed to give politically correct answers to questions like ‘Who’s better, Congress or BJP?’. Grok, however, seems to lack that filter and appears unafraid to tackle controversial issues head-on,” he adds.

Nikhil Pahwa, the founder-editor of MediaNama.com, a technology policy website, believes that the “discourse around Grok’s statements in India is overblown”.

“At its core, AI is fundamentally ‘garbage in, garbage out’ – its outputs reflect the data it is trained on, and the weights given to it,” he says.

“Since Grok is trained on the entirety of X, it naturally mirrors the tone and patterns of discourse found there, including the bizarre responses and the abusing we are seeing.

“This isn’t about ideology; it’s about the nature of the input shaping the output,” he adds.

When the BBC asked Grok who spreads the most disinformation on X, it responded on Thursday: “Musk is a strong contender, given his reach and recent sentiment on X, but I can’t crown him just yet.”

Joyojeet Pal, who studies political use of social media at the University of Michigan, says unlike a politician or celebrity with a set ideology, a chatbot is only partisan if explicitly trained to be or if its data overwhelmingly supports a particular view. If a chatbot leans too partisan, it risks losing its competitive edge.

“In Grok’s particular case, this is tickling liberals because the most dominant voices on the platform [X] lean right and are dismissive of liberal arguments. But the larger data it trains on is likely to present a more balanced view of the world, often explicitly at odds with what its loudest voices are saying,” he said.

India’s IT ministry is already in touch with X regarding Grok’s use of inappropriate language and “controversial responses”, according to reports.

While some view this as a passing phase, with Mr Sinha predicting that “people will soon get bored of it and all this will be short lived”, Grok’s unfiltered nature hints it might be here to stay. At least for the time being.

Here’s a glimpse of what we’ll be covering: 

Weather:Finally, we’ll wrap up with a weather forecast for the whole world.

Local News:We’ll start with the happenings in your town.

National News:We’ll then turn our attention to the major events unfolding across your country

International News:We’ll also provide updates on key international developments

Business News:We’ll have a segment dedicated to the latest business news and economic trends

Sports News:We’ll also be covering the latest sports news.

No. 30 Coffee Lounge in Brandon, Suffolk, recently welcomed Alphonso that has the capability of serving and interacting with customers.

Manager Nicki Plume said it had become the talk of her customers and the robot had been “very helpful”.

She stressed however he was not there to replace staff.

“It’s just helpful for the girls during the day and we open in evenings as an Italian restaurant, so it’s helpful to bring the food over, clearing the tables,” she explained.

“He’s not going to replace anyone, he’s just helping.

“The kids really like him… we were the talk of the old people’s home as well they were talking about him down there, so we’ve had lots of old people come in and ask to be served by Alphonso.”

Other restaurants across the country are using similar robots, which can in some cases cost about £18,500 to buy.

It is not just robots changing our High Streets however, as even more technology influences consumer habits and experiences.

Digital Ipswich Innovation Showcase has been taking place, showing how technology can “revitalise” town centres through artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

James Lee Burgess, 51, is the founder of Urban Tech Creative and attended the event to give visitors the chance to experience a ‘phygital’ – physical and digital – retail experience through headsets.

“The idea is we have digital content for brands that can be provided anywhere or any place using [an empty shelf] as a backdrop.”

He likened it to “an infinite shop front” enabling a number of brands to show their products through the headsets.

Also at the Ipswich event was Nana Parry, 38, co-founder of Cluso.

It is a tool that makes it easier for the public to give feedback on consumer experiences through voice note recordings, which he believed could improve Ipswich.

“One of the great things about Ipswich is everything in terms of regeneration,” he said.

“So we know that it’s really important to get people back into the towns, experiencing the High Street.

“One of the ways of doing that is by using Cluso, getting the public to share exactly what they want from these experiences.”

Jack Norris, 35, is director of Zubr, offering people the chance to experience AR and VR through digital binoculars.

It was being used at the Ipswich event to show what the town’s waterfront may have looked like during the 1890s.

He believed the technology could become “street furniture”, giving visitors looks into the past.

“The very familiar looking nature of it also appeals to older people who perhaps would never install a 3D app on a phone.

“They’ll just come and have a look through it thinking they might see the real world and being surprised hopefully impressed by seeing our historical visuals instead.”

But this was not an AI showroom or laboratory – this robot was living on a coffee table in a Beijing apartment, along with Timmy.

The first night it came home, Timmy hugged his little robot friend before heading to bed. He doesn’t have a name for it – yet.

“It’s like a little teacher or a little friend,” the boy said, as he showed his mum the next move he was considering on the chess board.

Moments later, the robot chimed in: “Congrats! You win.” Round eyes blinking on the screen, it began rearranging the pieces to start a new game as it continued in Mandarin: “I’ve seen your ability, I will do better next time.”

China is embracing AI in its bid to become a tech superpower by 2030.

DeepSeek, the breakthrough Chinese chatbot that caught the world’s attention in January, was just the first hint of that ambition.

Money is pouring into AI businesses seeking more capital, fuelling domestic competition. There are more than 4,500 firms developing and selling AI, schools in the capital Beijing are introducing AI courses for primary and secondary students later this year, and universities have increased the number of places available for students studying AI.

“This is an inevitable trend. We will co-exist with AI,” said Timmy’s mum, Yan Xue. “Children should get to know it as early as possible. We should not reject it.”

She is keen for her son to learn both chess and the strategy board game Go – the robot does both, which persuaded her that its $800 price tag was a good investment. Its creators are already planning to add a language tutoring programme.

Perhaps this was what the Chinese Communist Party hoped for when it declared in 2017 that AI would be “the main driving force” of the country’s progress. President Xi Jinping is now betting big on it, as a slowing Chinese economy grapples with the blow of tariffs from its biggest trading partner, the United States.

Beijing plans to invest 10tn Chinese yuan ($1.4tn; £1tn) in the next 15 years as it competes with Washington to gain the edge in advanced tech. AI funding got yet another boost at the government’s annual political gathering, which is currently under way. This comes on the heels of a 60 billion yuan-AI investment fund created in January, just days after the US further tightened export controls for advanced chips and placed more Chinese firms on a trade blacklist.

But DeepSeek has shown that Chinese companies can overcome these barriers. And that’s what has stunned Silicon Valley and industry experts – they did not expect China to catch up so soon.

It’s a reaction Tommy Tang has become accustomed to after six months of marketing his firm’s chess-playing robot at various competitions.

Timmy’s machine comes from the same company, SenseRobot, which offers a wide range in abilities – Chinese state media hailed an advanced version in 2022 that beat chess Grand Masters at the game.

“Parents will ask about the price, then they will ask where I am from. They expect me to come from the US or Europe. They seem surprised that I am from China,” Mr Tang said, smiling. “There will always be one or two seconds of silence when I say I am from China.”

His firm has sold more than 100,000 of the robots and now has a contract with a major US supermarket chain, Costco.

One of the secrets to China’s engineering success is its young people. In 2020, more than 3.5 million of the country’s students graduated with degrees in science, technology, engineering and maths, better known as STEM.

That’s more than any other country in the world – and Beijing is keen to leverage it. “Building strength in education, science and talent is a shared responsibility,” Xi told party leaders last week.

Ever since China opened its economy to the world in the late 1970s, it has “been through a process of accumulating talent and technology,” says Abbott Lyu, vice-president of Shanghai-based Whalesbot, a firm that makes AI toys. “In this era of AI, we’ve got many, many engineers, and they are hardworking.”

Behind him, a dinosaur made of variously coloured bricks roars to life. It’s being controlled through code assembled on a smartphone by a seven-year-old.

The company is developing toys to help children as young as three learn code. Every package of bricks comes with a booklet of code. Children can then choose what they want to build and learn how to do it. The cheapest toy sells for around $40.

“Other countries have AI education robots as well, but when it comes to competitiveness and smart hardware, China is doing better,” Mr Lyu insists.

The success of DeepSeek turned its CEO Liang Wenfeng into a national hero and “is worth 10 billion yuan of advertising for [China’s] AI industry,” he added.

“It has let the public know that AI is not just a concept, that it can indeed change people’s lives. It has inspired public curiosity.”

Six homegrown AI firms, including DeepSeek, have now been nicknamed China’s six little dragons by the internet – the others are Unitree Robotics, Deep Robotics, BrainCo, Game Science, and Manycore Tech.

Some of them were at a recent AI fair in Shanghai, where the biggest Chinese firms in the business showed off their advances, from search and rescue robots to a backflipping dog-like one, which wandered the halls among visitors.

In one bustling exhibition hall, two teams of humanoid robots battled it out in a game of football, complete in red and blue jerseys. The machines fell when they clashed – and one of them was even taken off the field in a stretcher by their human handler who was keen to keep the joke going.

It was hard to miss the air of excitement among developers in the wake of DeepSeek. “Deepseek means the world knows we are here,” said Yu Jingji, a 26-year-old engineer.

But as the world learns of China’s AI potential, there are also concerns about what AI is allowing the Chinese government to learn about its users.

AI is hungry for data – the more it gets, the smarter it makes itself and, with around a billion mobile phone users compared to just over 400 million in the US, Beijing has a real advantage.

The West, its allies and many experts in these countries believe that data gathered by Chinese apps such as DeepSeek, RedNote or TikTok can be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party. Some point to the country’s National Intelligence Law as evidence of this.

But Chinese firms, including ByteDance, which owns TikTok, says the law allows for the protection of private companies and personal data. Still, suspicion that US user data on TikTok could end up in the hands of the Chinese government drove Washington’s decision to ban the hugely popular app.

That same fear – where privacy concerns meet national security challenges – is hitting Deepseek. South Korea banned new downloads of DeepSeek, while Taiwan and Australia have barred the app from government-issued devices.

Chinese companies are aware of these sensitivities and Mr Tang was quick to tell the BBC that “privacy was a red line” for his company. Beijing also realises that this will be a challenge in its bid to be a global leader in AI.

“DeepSeek’s rapid rise has triggered hostile reactions from some in the West,” a commentary in the state-run Beijing Daily noted, adding that “the development environment for China’s AI models remains highly uncertain”.

But China’s AI firms are not deterred. Rather, they believe thrifty innovation will win them an undeniable advantage – because it was DeepSeek’s claim that it could rival ChatGPT for a fraction of the cost that shocked the AI industry.

So the engineering challenge is how to make more, for less. “This was our Mission Impossible,” Mr Tang said. His company found that the robotic arm used to move chess pieces was hugely expensive to produce and would drive the price up to around $40,000.

So, they tried using AI to help do the work of engineers and enhance the manufacturing process. Mr Tang claims that has driven the cost down to $1,000.

“This is innovation,” he says. “Artificial engineering is now integrated into the manufacturing process.”

This could have enormous implications as China applies AI on a vast scale. State media already show factories full of humanoid robots. In January, the government said that it would promote the development of AI-powered humanoid robots to help look after its rapidly ageing population.

Xi has repeatedly declared “technological self-reliance” a key goal, which means China wants to create its own advanced chips, to make up for US export restrictions that could hinder its plans.

The Chinese leader knows he is in for a long race – the Beijing Daily recently warned that the DeepSeek moment was not a time for “AI triumphalism” because China was still in “catch-up mode”.

President Xi is investing heavily in artificial intelligence, robots and advanced tech in preparation for a marathon that he hopes China will eventually win.

“I immediately thought of a sci-fi movie where it looked like a troop formation about to attack,” Simon Eriksson, a workman from Malmo, told the Swedish state broadcaster.

The pyrotechnics were in fact caused by a Space X Falcon 9 rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. There are reports of sightings in Denmark, Sweden and England.

Pieces of the rocket then crashed into Poland and, experts say, may also have landed in Ukraine.

At around 10:00 local time (09:00 GMT), Adam Borucki was astonished to find what appeared to be a charred tank measuring around 1.5m by 1m behind his warehouse in Komorniki, Poland.

“When we came to work, we found a total mess with broken power poles in the storage yard,” Mr Borucki told the BBC.

He said that some that some electrical items and a concrete block stored in the warehouse were also damaged.

“I felt surprised but also a little scared. But ultimately, I’m glad no-one was hurt,” he added.

Mr Borucki contacted the police who, working alongside the Polish space agency Polsa, determined that the unidentified object was debris from a Falcon 9 rocket, manufactured by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.

“We are investigating how the object ended up in this location, but the important thing is that no-one was harmed,” police spokesperson Andrzej Borowiak said.

A similar piece of debris was discovered in a forest near the Polish village of Wiry, according to Polish police.

Polsa has confirmed that “an uncontrolled re-entry of the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage occurred between 04:46 and 04:48 on February 19, 2025, over Poland”.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is used to transport people and payloads into the Earth’s thermosphere and sometimes beyond. It is designed to be reusable.

The rocket which created this debris was launched by SpaceX from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 1 February.

“It was supposed to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in a controlled manner and crash into the Pacific Ocean,” Harvard University astrophysicist Dr Jonathan McDowell told the BBC.

“But the engine failed. We’ve seen it orbiting Earth for the past few weeks and we were anticipating an uncontrolled re-entry today, which is what people saw burning in the sky.

“The debris zipped over England at around 17,000 mph, then parts of Scandinavia then parts crashed into eastern Europe at a few hundred miles an hour.”

Space debris from rockets and satellites re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere several times a month. Usually pieces of space debris are entirely burned up by Earth’s atmosphere but larger piece can fall to earth. According to Dr McDowell, an uncontrolled large rocket re-entry is rare and has the potential to be dangerous.

“So far, we’ve been lucky and no-one has been hurt but the more we put into the Earth’s orbit, the more likely it is that our luck will run out,” he said.

“This is the fourth incident recently with a SpaceX Falcon which is causing concern. It looks like glitches like this engine failure are becoming more common.”

So far large pieces of debris have been confirmed in Poland but Dr McDowell suspects that pieces have crashed into western Ukraine where the comet-like streaks of light in the sky “were clearly visible”.

“It’s quite the omen for how our civilisation is changing,” he added.

Part of the Cornwall Festival of Tech, the sell out event ‘Ameca: A Robot’s Journey to Creation’ saw about 250 participants attend Truro College to explore tech workshops, exhibits, and talks.

The robot has made several appearance at events across the world, but the festival in Cornwall was the first chance for the public to see it up close.

Some festival-goers said they were “gobsmacked” by its range of expressions while others found it “disconcerting.”

Will Jackson, CEO of Falmouth based Engineered Arts, which created Ameca, said its facial expressions and gestures made it standout from other advanced humanoid robots.

Mr Jackson said his team had focused on how the robot communicates to help with its purpose as a platform for artificial intelligence development.

“The human face is one of the highest bandwidth communication tools, you can get a lot of information over,” he said.

“You’re nodding your head a little bit, you’re making eye contact, your eyebrows raise a little bit, I can read a thousand words into every little gesture.

“If we can bring that kind of capability to a robot it would make our communication so much more human-like, so that’s the idea.”

Mr Jackson said Ameca had deliberately been designed not to look too realistic.

“You’ll find the more it looks like people the more acceptable it becomes, up until a point where it gets very, very close.

“Then you get a big dip and people go ‘I don’t like that’.

“It’s at that point that you’ve started to blur the line between what’s human and what’s robot.”

One woman at the Cornwall Festival of Tech told BBC Spotlight that Ameca was “a little bit disconcerting” due to how its robotic facial muscles moved and how human-like its hands were.

A man at the festival said he was “gobsmacked” by the “amazing” robot and that he was impressed that it was made in Cornwall.

It is the latest development in quantum computing – tech which uses principles of particle physics to create a new type of computer able to solve problems ordinary computers cannot.

Creating quantum computers powerful enough to solve important real-world problems is very challenging – and some experts believe them to be decades away.

Microsoft says this timetable can now be sped up because of the “transformative” progress it has made in developing the new chip involving a “topological conductor”, based on a new material it has produced.

The firm believes its topoconductor has the potential to be as revolutionary as the semiconductor was in the history of computing.

But experts have told the BBC more data is needed before the significance of the new research – and its effect on quantum computing – can be fully assessed.

Jensen Huang – boss of the leading chip firm, Nvidia – said in January he believed “very useful” quantum computing would come in 20 years.

Chetan Nayak, a technical fellow of quantum hardware at Microsoft, said he believed the developments would shake up conventional thinking about the future of quantum computers.

“Many people have said that quantum computing, that is to say useful quantum computers, are decades away,” he said. “I think that this brings us into years rather than decades.”

Travis Humble, director of the Quantum Science Center of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US, said he agreed Microsoft would now be able to deliver prototypes faster – but warned there remained work to do.

“The long term goals for solving industrial applications on quantum computers will require scaling up these prototypes even further,” he said.

There are numerous important problems that “classical” computers, of the sort we use every day in our phones, and laptops and power most modern applications, cannot solve.

But these are problems quantum machines might be able to rapidly crack, promising new discoveries by creating new medicines or designing better batteries.

A host of technology firms, including the silicon valley giants, are currently engaged in a multi-billion dollar race to develop a quantum computer powerful enough to solve these problems.

Microsoft is approaching the problem differently to most of its rivals.

Its path to building a quantum computer relied upon being able to create a “topoconductor” or topological conductor.

It uses the newly developed material to create a new state of matter- a so-called “topological state” which isn’t a gas, liquid or solid and, until relatively recently, had existed only in theory.

Specifically, it relies on so-called Majorana particles, which themselves were previously considered theoretical – work claiming that they had been discovered in 2018 had to be retracted.

While rivals produced a steady stream of announcements – notably Google’s “Willow” at the end of 2024 – Microsoft seemed to be taking longer.

Pursuing this approach was, in the company’s own words, a “high-risk, high-rewards” strategy, but one it now believes is going to pay off.

“In the same way that the invention of semiconductors made today’s smartphones, computers and electronics possible, topoconductors and the new type of chip they enable offer a path to developing quantum system,” Microsoft said.

The biggest challenge of quantum computers relates to their fundamental building block, called a qubit, which is incredibly fast but also extremely difficult to control and prone to errors.

The more qubits a chip has the more capable it is.

Microsoft says it has put eight of its new topological qubits on its new chip – considerably less than the chips created by some of its rivals.

However, it claims to have a path to scaling it up to a million qubits – which would create immense computing power.

Professor Paul Stevenson of Surrey University said the research published by Microsoft was a “significant step”, but he felt it had tough challenges ahead.

“Until the next steps have been achieved, it is too soon to be anything more than cautiously optimistic,” he said.

Chris Heunen, Professor of Quantum Programming at the University of Edinburgh, told the BBC he felt Microsoft’s plans were “credible”.

“This is promising progress after more than a decade of challenges, and the next few years will see whether this exciting roadmap pans out,” he said.

Napier AI provides technology to help banks and other financial institutions detect and prevent criminal behaviour, such as money laundering.

The firm, which was founded in 2015 and employs 250 people, moved into its new office at Pearl Assurance in the city centre last week.

Twenty-five of the 106 new jobs are already in place, with the remaining roles expected to be filled by 2027.

The new roles come with average salaries of more than £46,000.

Once the jobs are filled, Napier AI said it will contribute almost £5m in additional salaries to the Northern Ireland economy.

Greg Watson, chief executive of Napier AI, said the company’s mission is to tackle what he describes as a “blight in society” – money laundering.

“Money laundering is incredibly successful unfortunately,” he said.

“3.2 trillion dollars a year is laundered, so we’re trying to bring automation AI to try and solve that and we feel like we’re making a big difference.”

Mr Watson said the firm’s decision to expand into Northern Ireland followed a “really extensive search globally” on locations, including Warsaw, Porto and Lisbon.

“We felt there was talent pools we could tap and we looked at about 12 different countries,” he said.

“We looked at the talent and some of the benefits here, the location, the language, the whole thing and we’re super excited about growing a presence here.”

Mr Watson said the roles include high-end research and development positions.

“A lot of AI skills, a lot of development skills. We believe the talent coming out of the universities and the talent in the general area is super impressive and we feel like we’re going to have a big future here.”

Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald said the announcement of about £10m in investment by the company is a “vote of confidence” for Northern Ireland.

“These are high-tech jobs in what is a priority sector for us as an executive, and they really closely align with what we’re trying to achieve in terms of our economic vision,” she told BBC News NI.

“It’s an exciting company that has chosen to base itself here in Belfast because of what we have to offer in terms of a location, but also that skill talent pool that is coming through our universities and colleges, so this is a really positive announcement.”

Invest NI’s chief executive Kieran Donoghue said it was “wonderful news” for Northern Ireland.

The creation of “very high quality jobs” in data science, software engineering and professional services would help raise Northern Ireland’s profile to other tech companies, he added.