BBC Director-General Matt Brittin said Tuesday that he recently watched a 50-minute episode of “Doctor Who” created entirely by artificial intelligence, and judged it good.
Speaking at the Royal Television Society’s London convention, Brittin said someone sent him the episode in recent days. “It’s pretty good,” he told interviewer Kirsty Young. He added quickly that the technology will not replace human creators, and he said the industry would come to that question later in the discussion. Brittin argued that six billion people now hold tools capable of producing content at the standard of a Hollywood studio, and that not all of the resulting creativity is bad.
He gave no details about the episode. He did not say who made it, or whether it used existing actors’ likenesses or invented new performers, questions with legal weight in the entertainment industry.
The remark carries extra force because of where he works. Brittin took over the BBC in May after Tim Davie and is the first director-general since Greg Dyke in 2000 to arrive without prior BBC experience. He spent 18 years at Google, where he ran operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Days earlier, he said the corporation would allow a program to be made and presented by AI within guardrails.
His endorsement of the technology came as the broadcaster wrestles with a £500 million ($662 million) savings drive that has led to hundreds of job losses. Channel closures could be announced as soon as this week, and the youth-focused BBC Three is understood to be at risk. Young pressed Brittin on why the BBC chose to reveal its cuts in stages instead of all at once.
He was not the only executive at the convention to speak up for AI. Kelly Day, Amazon’s international boss, said the technology lowers costs, which lets more stories reach screens, more varied voices be heard and more creative risks be taken.
“Doctor Who,” which has aired for six decades, is due to return in a couple of years under a new creative team. The BBC has not said whether it plans any use of AI on the series.
