I have been having trouble trying to open Shutterstock.com. My IT lady spent a lot of time trying to sort it out and eventually gave up, so I Googled the problem, specifically referring to Shutterstock.

It turned out that mine was not the only instance. In fact I got to a Shutterstock message stating that if I had a 406 error when connecting to them, I should phone their help line.

They’re in the USA, but I phoned them anyway. A recorded voice directed me to enter “2” and one of our friendly consultants will gladly help you.

Then Hey! I got through immediately. no “Unusual high volumes, we appreciate your call, please be patient”

Then this friendly guy with an unidentifiable (not American) accent said he understood the problem and would send me an email with a password. I rang off but felt that, somehow, he had missed the point.

So, I called again. Another friendly guy with the same unidentifiable accent answered immediately. I started explaining that I was not sure that the previous guy had understood me, but he seemed confused by all this, so I just told him I was getting a 406 error and he said he would send me an email explaining how to fix it.

That’s when I realised I’d been having conversations with a computer. What really gave it away was its friendly responses. “Fine, I’ve got that” said in exactly the same friendly way every time I gave it a bit of information.

That got me thinking. What would happen if I could tell a friendly bot to phone Shutterstock Help Desk for me to try to resolve my problem? Would they fall in love?