Google has fired the software engineer who claimed the company's AI chatbot was a self-aware person.

Lemoine had been placed on paid administrative leave after he publicly claimed LaMDA, an algorithm designed to generate human language, had gained sentience.

Google told Reuters they had let Lemoine go because he "chose to persistently violate clear employment and data security policies that include the need to safeguard product information."

Lemoine had come to believe the technology was sentient after being assigned to test if it was biased.

In a statement, Google rejected the claims, calling them "wholly unfounded".

"LaMDA has been through 11 distinct reviews, and we published a research paper earlier this year detailing the work that goes into its responsible development."