A scandal has erupted in the UK after a close aide to Prime Minister Andy Burnham allegedly used artificial intelligence to edit and emotionally enhance a political speech the head of government was to deliver at a Labour Party event in Wales.

According to a report by the *Daily Mail* newspaper, the aide, who works as a speechwriter at Downing Street, was seen using ChatGPT during a train journey from London to Wales on November 13. He was working on the text of Burnham's speech, asking the chatbot to make certain parts of it more powerful and emotional.

What has sparked debate is not simply the use of AI for language corrections, but the suspicion that the technology has been directly involved in constructing the political message and how it was intended to influence the public.

According to the *Daily Mail*, one of the requests to ChatGPT related to a passage about the political legacy of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the consequences of deindustrialization on British communities.

The assistant allegedly asked the artificial intelligence to convey this part more emotionally. ChatGPT suggested that the closure of mines, factories, and steel plants was linked not only to the loss of jobs, but also to the destruction of social life that had been built around the industry.

The chatbot's proposals included references to workers' clubs, choirs, sports teams, and unions, as part of a community structure that disappeared with the decline of industrial production.

Even, according to the report, ChatGPT suggested a certain way of telling the story: from the miners to their families and then to the wider community, to highlight how industrial work created social connections beyond the workplace itself.

Similar elements were included in a speech Burnham gave in Llandudno, Wales, on November 14. In it, he criticized the policies of Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s, arguing that the closure of mines, factories and steel plants destroyed not only the economy of many areas but also the way of life of communities.

The case has also sparked reactions in the opposition camp. The head of Reform UK, Lee Anderson, reacted with irony to the use of ChatGPT by one of the prime minister's associates.

Anderson linked this episode to the government's problems in addressing issues like the cost of living, while also questioning the authenticity of Burnham's public image, claiming that it is more constructed than spontaneous.

Downing Street, on the other hand, tried to downplay the significance of the report. A spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office told the *Daily Mail* that Burnham writes most of his own speeches and that this case was no exception.

The revelation comes at a delicate moment for the prime minister, who is facing pressure from within the Labour Party over proposed changes to the welfare system. Burnham is struggling to secure support from Labour MPs for the reforms, while the use of artificial intelligence in preparing the speech has opened up another debate about how political messages are being crafted.