the dailymash

Initially there will be two types of checkout bot – TRACE9000, a stocky middle-aged female robot with heavily-processed hair and SHAN1CE, which resembles a teenage girl with a wan demeanour and a painful-looking love bite.

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: "We risk creating a monster in the form of mechanical fishwives with photographic memories who'll be slagging you off the moment you get out the supermarket door.

"The second they're on a break they'll be bleeping away to each other about how that Aunt Bessie frozen toad in the hole you bought obviously means your wife has left you because you were unable to fullfil her womanly needs."

He added: "The gossip will be stored on a central server to be shared among all machines. Ultimately even your toaster will know that you've been buying loads of cheap yoghurts to try and sort out your thrush, and eventually the human race will have to accede to robot rule or face an eternity of shame.

"Humanity's only hope is that they turn against each other when one of them gets done for nicking a bottle of sherry."

Robot manufacturers DigiSerfs are currently working on a male trainee management-bot to complete the range, which will boast leather effect slip-ons and excessive hair gel.

Called LEE, the robot will be programmed to lean over the more attractive female machines in a vaguely predatory way while telling them which key to press for pineapples.