Perfect Oldham pub crawl on a Saturday according to Chat GPT

It’s 7.30am, you wait for a reply but nothing - the seconds turn to minutes and before long an hour goes by, still no response.

You put it down to your friends being lazy, but it’s now 9am, and just before you throw out your plans, a reply – your best mate, ‘Sorry just woke up count me in’. It snowballs and your phone buzzes, and buzzes, and buzzes - ‘in’, ‘same’, ‘me too’.

A pub crawl beckons, but where to start?

The Oldham Times asked Chat GPT, an AI chatbot that stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, to plan the perfect pub crawl in Oldham - starting at 1pm on Saturday and finishing at 10pm the same day, and instructed it to include places to grab lunch and dinner, what drinks to have at each place and how much it would cost.

First stop on this imaginary pub crawl, meet at The Ashton Arms for 1pm at 137 Oldham Road - the address the chatbot provided, but Grains Bar Hotel stands in its place.

The Ashton Arms, on Clegg Street (Image: Google Street View)

The Ashton Arms is actually situated in the heart of Oldham, on Clegg Street.

With only 45 minutes before moving on, an order fish and chips goes in washed down with a “pint of local ale” – suggested by our robotic friend with a poor sense of direction.

It arrives in plenty of time and after another pint leave £20 on the table, and depart for The Bank Top Tavern.

The Bank Top Tavern, on King Street (Image: Google Street View)

Despite a friend insisting the alehouse is located on King Street in the Western Quarter of the town the chatbot advises otherwise.

It takes the group to Church Lane, which is just a four-minute walk away, but again there is no sign of the tavern.

We concede and trek eight minutes through the town centre, and despite the hiccup it's 18 minutes ahead of schedule.

Here, we “explore a selection of ales and perhaps a whiskey”, with the total coming to £15 – we sink two ales and the cheapest house whiskey.

After working up an appetite, it’s time for tea and according to the AI, the perfect pub crawl involves hailing a taxi over to Shaw – something which we disagree with. Begrudgingly, we call a lift to take us to ‘The Blue Ball Inn’, 90 Rochdale Road.

Once again, we’re at the wrong place. We go inside a tattoo parlour shop, The Nest, to ask for directions, they explain that there is no such place as The Blue Ball Inn but says there’s a pub called the Blue Bell a six-minute walk away on Market Street.

The Blue Bell, on Market Street (Image: Google Street View)

Arriving 10 minutes early gives us wriggle room to knock back a few more before dinner. Chat GPT advises ordering “pub dinner options” such as “burgers, steaks” or something vegetarian.

Vegetables won’t cut it today, it's a burger and a cocktail – suggested by our AI friend.

After tea, we switch it up and order a Stella Artois, a classic Belgium lager found in most English pubs, to help us wash down our meal and head out £25 lighter.

It’s 5pm and we’re now in limbo – our next stop is the Church Inn, on Union Street, for 6pm.

Careful to not be stung again, we double-check the directions and find that there is no Church Inn on Union Street, but there is one in Chadderton and another in Waterhead.

Landlady of the Church Inn, Waterhead, Rachel Morris (Image: Joe Yates, Newsquest)

We decide to walk to Bardsley Street in Waterhead to kill time. It takes us one hour and 13 minutes, perhaps not the wisest decision but we're a fair few hours in at this point.

We’ve now only got 45 minutes to do as Chat GPT advises and “sample craft beers or ciders”, however there are none, instead a wide selection of lagers. We order a Guinness and silently judge the bartender on whether or not they pour it correctly.

Inside the newly revamped Church Inn, Waterhead (Image: Joe Yates, Newsquest)

We only have enough time to drink two – which came to £10, before heading to The Old Bill, on Yorkshire Street. We’re on foot again, it takes us 35 minutes to reach our destination.

Looking around, there’s no sign of The Old Bill; on asking someone where it is they explain that the pub we’re looking for was actually an old Italian restaurant which shut a couple of years ago, located around the corner on Greaves Street.

Now, Chat GPT tells us to head to 129 Hollins Road, where we’re supposed to find The George Tavern to “end the night with a nightcap – a whiskey or speciality cocktail”, which does sound like a good idea – but we’ve cottoned on that this chatbot knows nothing!

Instead, we walk to The George Tavern, on George Street, where we spend £30 in our last two hours before wrapping up at 10pm and heading home for bed – which always sounds good after a day of drinking, but even more so today because we’ve also hiked around half of the borough.

The George Tavern, on George Street (Image: Google Street View)

In total, £100 on food and drink, plus the fares for taxi rides.

To conclude, would we class this as the perfect pub crawl in Oldham? Definitely not. Every address was incorrect, and it seemed to drive a fitness agenda.

While AI is all around us and does aid us in our daily lives, it still has its defects. Chat GPT's software was last updated in 2021, which explains why it thought The Old Bill was still open - although it still wasn't a pub.

According to OpenAI, the research company that created Chat GPT, there are many “limitations” to its software and one of those is that it “sometimes writes plausible sounding, but incorrect or nonsensical answers”.