A sad sign of the times

I occasionally contribute letters to the New Scientist, especially the question-and-answer section called The Last Word. When you send in an answer, you get an automated reply immediately. But this reply now has an extra paragraph which saddens me:
Quote:

We are aware that putting our Last Word questions to an AI chatbot could be an easy option to take, but ask any contributors to stick to giving us their own, human responses to our readers' queries about science. This is, after all, the point, and the pleasure, of Last Word!

What is the world coming to!