What did codebreaker Alan Turing do to deserve being dragged back to life like this?

The tortured mathematical genius who helped defeat the Nazis – and invented AI in the process – has been resurrected digitally. Is this what he would really have wanted his technology to be used for, wonders Paul Clements

Alan Turing – the British mathematician who helped the Allies crack the Enigma code – appears in an advert as an avatar (AlanTuring_AI/X/Alamy)

If you’ve been on social media lately, you will have seen it – the viral ad in which Alan Turing is brought back to life by the artificial intelligence he made possible, to promote a firm selling chatbot learning courses. Your algorithms may have spared you the video so far, but it, and the furore it has generated, is but a click away.

Singaporean tech company Genius Group has magically “revived” the tortured mathematical genius in digitised form and, in a move that’s somehow even more objectionable, have “appointed” him as its chief AI officer.

Looking raffish and rugged, the floppy-haired and, dare I say, dashing Turing avatar – think Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Turing in The Imitation Game, but more chiselled of jaw, broader of chest and less wonky of eye – is heard to intone, in a wandering, transatlantic accent: “The real me died 70 years ago. My gosh, you’ve all been busy, haven’t you, while I’ve been away… Anyways, nice to be back."