I’M beginning to think I just don’t know what is real anymore – and (at the risk of sounding like a merchant of doom) it’s deeply worrying.

My own brush with Internet scammers recently has left me feeling uncomfortably nervous of technology.

In my column last week I spoke about how my email account was hacked and how, for the best part of four hours, scammers tried to extract money from my contacts.

Small wonder I have friends who are steadfastly resisting the move to online banking. Too dangerous, they say.

I used to think they were living in the dark ages – now I’m not so sure.

It’s odd that a few weeks ago my wife and I were actually applauding fakery!

We had been to see the Abba Voyage show in London. If you haven’t been yet, I can highly recommend it. But while it was exceptional, vibrant entertainment, it was also vaguely disconcerting.

The four stars of Abba aren’t really there. The 12 piece band is – they are real – but Abba themselves are avatars. And not just ordinary avatars. These “people” replicate the band’s movements and facial expressions perfectly.

They can turn, pass in front of each other, have fully formed sides, backs, tops and bottoms. At the end of every song we applauded them – which in itself was odd, because they weren’t there to hear our reaction!

Such fakery makes for great entertainment. But of course artificial intelligence is doing the same outside of the cosy sanctuary of a theatre.

Jo Biden, Sir Keir Starmer and Taylor Swift have all been victims of deep fakery. Video and audio of them – except it’s not them, saying things they didn’t say. Like Abba!

And of course the Internet is full of fake news. Worryingly, a lot of people believe it. A recent survey revealed that 1 in 10 people came across fake news in their day-to-day lives.

Even more worryingly, 45 per cent of those rarely checked the source of that information. So, lies are perpetuated, fiction is passed on as fact.  Where will it all end? I have no idea.

But even on a simple level I think it’s sad. That lovely Facebook video of the poodle dog putting cuddling up to its two-year-old “master” in bed, pulling covers over the child with its mouth. 

As a soft dog lover, I’ve shown it to loads of friends. Now I wonder if it’s even real.