PRINCE HARRY’S AI WARNING SPEECH CUT SHORT BY BIZARRE TECHNICAL GLITCH — ‘AI GOT INTO MY SPEECH’ JOKE LEAVES CROWD STUNNED

Prince Harry was forced to abruptly stop his speech about the dangers of artificial intelligence after a technical failure left him standing silently on stage — only for the Duke of Sussex to return moments later with an ironic joke about AI.

Harry was addressing the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting on Wednesday when his teleprompter reportedly failed while he was only partway through his address.

The awkward interruption left him standing on stage in silence for several seconds before he eventually said: “And that’s it.”

The moment quickly spread online, with Piers Morgan taking aim at Harry on X.

“Says all you need to know about this virtue-signalling halfwit,” Morgan wrote, followed by a string of laughing emojis.

But Harry soon returned to the stage and appeared to embrace the irony of what had just happened.

“Hello again,” he said. “So AI got into my speech, so I was asked to come out and finish it. Interesting to see what it was so concerned about.”

He then continued his address without further interruption, turning his attention back to what he described as the growing risks artificial intelligence could pose to children.

It was Harry’s first US appearance since his family returned to live in the UK last month, and he repeatedly framed his concerns through the perspective of a father.

“Innovation has never required us to gamble with our children’s lives. We should not accept that bargain now,” he said.

“I come to this as a father — one who has shared countless conversations with other parents as they mourned the loss of their children to recklessly built technology.

“And as a father, I will remind you of the faces that accompanied me the last time I stood before you. Hundreds have become thousands.”

Behind him, the presentation displayed lock-screen photographs of children who had died by suicide or suffered serious harm connected to experiences on social media.

Harry argued that AI could create an even more personal relationship between young people and technology.

“It’s the same playbook that built the last crisis — only now the technology is more persuasive, more intimate, and more powerful,” he said.

“And there is another difference this time. Social media learned how to capture our attention. AI is learning how to enter our relationships.”

He continued: “It doesn’t just want your attention, it wants your attachment. It wants to be the thing you confide in.

“The thing that remembers you. The thing that tells you it understands you. The ultimate sycophant. For a child, that distinction matters enormously.”

Harry warned that the world could not afford to wait years before responding to the potential impact of AI on children’s relationships.

“We have spent years trying to loosen technology’s grip on children’s attention,” he said. “We cannot wait another decade to discover what happens when technology has a grip on their relationships.”

The two-day Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, hosted by Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, brings together figures from around the world to discuss major global challenges.

Harry’s intervention came just days after King Charles warned AI executives about what he described as the “existential dangers” posed by rapidly developing technology.

What began as an unexpectedly awkward interruption ultimately became an almost surreal backdrop to Harry’s central warning — that technology is becoming increasingly difficult to separate from the way people, particularly children, communicate, trust and form relationships.