Labour’s AI image of Zack Polanski. Right: Alastair Campbell and Luciana Berger on the Lib Dem campaign trail

THERE will come a point when any reasonable person will have to start feeling sorry for Labour councillors and candidates trying to win seats at May’s council elections.

As diligent as they may all be on the doorstep, the party’s overall London Labour campaign keeps making their life harder for them with the world’s crinkliest social media.

Somebody (presumably somebody getting paid) in head office has been let loose with a login to an AI tool and, giggling away as they punch the keyboard, has generated a picture of Green Party leader Zack Polanski during his days in the Liberal Democrats, apparently besotted with the coalition government.

The first thing to say here is that if the Labour Party is going to make AI photos of Polanski, there can be no tears if the same comes back at their own leaders.

It’s a bruising time to be a politician when an instant caricature can be made of you in any situation. Harrington saw one the other day of Sir Keir Starmer serving as one of the front benchers in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow opposition. No, hang on, just checked – it wasn’t a fake after all. It happened.

Secondly, voters don’t mind a laugh at the funny things that AI can do but it doesn’t increase trust in whoever makes the images. It makes you come across as a laptop devil rather than someone who will come up with a policy to bring our bills down.

And thirdly, the whole point of campaigns and politics is surely debate and persuasion. People are allowed to change their minds over a whole decade. Labour wouldn’t be in power now, if people hadn’t changed their minds about the Tories.

Polanski is open about his journey from the Lib Dems to the Greens; he’s open about how his views have changed. It happens.

It’s why we can tell you that pictures of people Labour treasure wearing Lib Dem rosettes and holding leaflets are not AI. There’s one of Alastair Campbell campaigning for the Lib Dems after the coalition ­– and Labour peer Baroness Luciana Berger standing for them as a parliamentary candidate.