Channel 4's AI Presenter Stunt Sparks Debate on Future of Media and Jobs

This TV Stunt Poses the Right Questions About AI and Jobs, and Fails to Answer Any

Katie is a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand. By the time I sat down to watch Channel 4's latest Dispatches documentary, the twist had already been spoiled for me. I knew from the get-go that the woman presenting the show wasn't real. Instead, she was AI dressed in a smart suit with a pitch-perfect British television accent - serious, soft and southern. UK broadcaster Channel 4 claims its use of an AI presenter was a first in TV history. (Russian state media may have a prior claim.) I'm not sure it's an experiment worth repeating. The deepfake technology used in the documentary generated a highly believable television presenter, who would have been entirely forgettable if it had not been for the novelty of the stunt. That's not just me being defensive; the presenter herself acknowledged her own limitations on screen. She's not on location to interact with any of the documentary's subjects, she points out. She's not able to conduct searching interviews or reach any Louis Theroux-style conclusions about what's taking place. At most points, she's little more than a voiceover. Her limitations reflect those of the wider experiment that took place in this episode of Dispatches, titled Will AI Take My Job? It saw four professionals - a doctor, a lawyer, a photographer and a composer - pitted against an AI rival in their line of work. Perhaps predictably, given the current stage of AI development, the challenges doled out to the workers and their AI counterparts were fairly one-dimensional tasks that represented a specific element of their job, rather than being a true expression of the multifaceted nature of their work. Only the photographer, who was tasked with a fashion photo shoot, "lost" the challenge - although it should be noted that her AI "rival" was in fact a piece of software operated and directed by two people who were making a steady stream of creative decisions. Even when AI performed well, with ChatGPT reaching some diagnoses similar to those of the doctor, it's clear that its capabilities are ultimately limited. It could not, for example, examine the foot of the woman with plantar fasciitis to determine how much pain she was in and therefore what level of intervention might be appropriate. Similarly, an AI presenter might be a suitable stand-in if you were making a one-note educational or instructional video, but it wouldn't be able to fulfill all of the duties of journalists who usually make documentaries. These include finding human case studies, persuading them to take part, making them feel comfortable enough to open up on camera and crafting what you find out from them into a compelling and cohesive narrative. (Channel 4 has said it doesn't plan to make a habit of using an AI presenter.) Still, the Dispatches documentary did capture where we are with AI in the here and now. The professionals involved experienced the kind of discomfort and soul-searching that any of us might feel if we were confronted with a deepfake version of ourselves who challenged our money-making skill set or craft. Perhaps the biggest failing of the documentary was that while it raised pertinent questions about AI, it then left them hanging without attempting answers. In the final five minutes of the show, Adam Cantwell-Corn, policy lead for the Trade Unions Congress Tech Project, and economist Daniel Susskind point out that a robust social security system is going to be necessary to deal with the unemployment caused by AI - a challenge for which no government is currently prepared. The British government's response was to say: "We're determined people have the tools they need to take advantage of [AI], which is why we're working with leading tech firms to train a fifth of our workforce in AI over the coming years." The documentary then immediately segued into dropping the bomb about the AI presenter before ending abruptly. It didn't challenge the government's statement - a missed opportunity. Pinning the solution to potential AI-induced mass unemployment - polls show it's something people are very worried about - on the hopes that tech companies will upskill us all in AI feels like asking the zombies to protect us during the apocalypse. It's naive at best, suicidal at worst. Tech companies have shown us time and again that they will prioritize profits over people. They don't even care about their own people, who they call family one day, then lay off with breathtakingly little compassion and respect the next. Governments would be delusional to think tech companies care one iota about the employment status of their citizens. One surefire way for tech companies to maximize profits is by minimizing headcount, both for themselves and their clients. If we were to be really cynical, we might assume mass unemployment is not just an unfortunate consequence of Big Tech's pursuit of AI superintelligence, but their ultimate goal. Perhaps it feels less scary for governments to toss this hot potato back at the tech companies than to grapple with it themselves. Because when faced with the reality that successive political administrations have been dismantling our social safety net piece by piece, the idea of rebuilding it probably seems unappealing, intimidating and maybe even completely insurmountable. Maybe it wouldn't occur to an AI journalist to point this out. But to this flesh-and-blood journalist, why our governments aren't preparing to help us navigate what could be an unemployment crisis feels like the million-dollar question for which every worker everywhere deserves a proper answer.

Joke's on you, fleshbag! Channel 4's first AI presenter is dizzyingly grim on so many levels

The AI-generated host of Dispatches raises worrying questions about Channel 4's environmental impact. She's also a dead-eyed host who might leave Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Kevin McCloud fearing for their future Last night's Dispatches was called Will AI Take My Job? Usually when something like this employs a question mark in the title, it's because the answer is no. Not this time, though, because the sheer overwhelming inevitability of AI taking our jobs is genuinely painful to think about. According to the film, 8m jobs in the UK alone are at risk of being outsourced by AI. Call centre workers, translators, graphic designers - anyone who isn't a masseur or a scaffolder, basically - will soon be made redundant by a technology that, despite its catastrophic effect on the environment, is growing more sophisticated by the hour. My days are almost certainly numbered; it stands to reason that I will soon be replaced by the ChatGPT prompt "Be performatively exasperated about whatever was just on the telly". Grok could even whip up a byline photo of an unpleasantly smug egg to go with it. Nobody would be any the wiser. But if we know AI is going to render us all useless, why would anyone watch Dispatches? Unless they get a perverse kick out of reinforcing all their darkest beliefs about the future of humanity, surely there was very little to be excited by. But the film anticipated this, and reacted with a cute little rug-pull of its own. The episode was presented by a journalist called Aisha Gaban. But, get this, she was AI all along. That's right, Channel 4 just Tilly Norwooded itself. There was not a single human thing about Gaban. She was an entirely computer generated presence. But despite being a bundle of pixels and code, she was a fairly convincing host. Sure, she was dead behind the eyes, and her mouth couldn't animate sibilance very well, but she looked more or less human and nailed the stilted cadence of the television documentarian. What a lark. That person you trusted as a figure of authority? Not even a person! Joke's on you, fleshbag. The meat of the show itself was diverting enough, taking four professionals - a doctor, a lawyer, a musician and a photographer - and pitting them against the best that AI can offer. The thrust of the results seemed to be that while humans are better, AI is quicker and cheaper. And, given that avarice is the motivating factor for every industry, this means that we are all royally screwed. Admittedly, some of the technology made sense. A tool that can diagnose patients in half the time of a traditional GP, for example, has the potential to support human medics who are already buckling under the strain of a broken system. But who the hell needs an AI photographer? Surely the point of AI is to remove drudgery from our lives, not automate creativity. The existence of AI photographers points to a horrifying future where we're all doomed to work in full service of machines that puke out crap art for ever. But anyway, this was all a sideshow to Aisha Gaban, apparently Britain's first AI television host. And honestly, it was hard to see her as anything but Channel 4's attempt to have its cake and eat it. Not only did it get to show off its swanky new toy, but it also got to tut-tut at the technology that created her. What an ingenious trick. It was even harder to see the film as anything other than a stark warning to all the other Channel 4 presenters. Hey Krishnan Guru-Murthy, you'd better not complain about office snacks in the future, or you'll be sacked in favour of a blinking mannequin we've programmed to read an Autocue. And no contract disputes from you, Kevin McCloud, because we can replace you with a virtual avatar that can frown at terrazzo worktops without ever needing a loo break. And that's without mentioning the environmental cost of it all. It would have been nice if Dispatches had Gaban end the show by detailing exactly how much water was used to run the datacentre that created her, especially given Channel 4's longstanding commitment to achieving net zero. All in all, it made for a dizzyingly grim watch on multiple levels. And given the speed with which AI is improving, this will only get worse. Three years from now you'll be getting ChatGPT to give you a bullet-pointed precis of an AI-generated criticism of a show that was presented by AI-generated hosts, while you dig in the dirt for worms to feed your family. Still, it was nice while it lasted, wasn't it?

Channel 4 makes history with Britain's first AI TV presenter and viewers are likening the twist to 'Black Mirror'

There's no doubt that AI usage is increasing in the entertainment world and the best streaming services, but UK broadcaster Channel 4 has taken that one step further by unveiling Britain's first AI TV presenter. In the new documentary Will AI Take My Job? Dispatches, which first aired on October 20, the presenter was revealed to be AI-generated in its closing moments. As our host tells us, "I'm not real. In a British TV first, I'm an AI presenter. Some of you might have guessed: I don't exist, I wasn't on location reporting this story. My image and voice were generated using AI." Head of news and current affairs, specialist factual and sport at Channel 4 Louisa Compton added in a press statement: "The use of an AI presenter is not something we will be making a habit of at Channel 4 - instead our focus in news and current affairs is on premium, fact checked, duly impartial and trusted journalism - something AI is not capable of doing. "But this stunt does serve as a useful reminder of just how disruptive AI has the potential to be - and how easy it is to hoodwink audiences with content they have no way of verifying." Yet it's potentially too little, too late for Channel 4 to present such a real danger and immediately recant it. Viewers are already likening the experience to a Black Mirror episode, and I'm not buying it as a one-off experiment. As one viewer said on X/Twitter: "A twist! In #Dispatches! It's like Black Mirror!" They're not wrong. The new documentary is crafted with more shrewd intent and cunning reveals than most TV shows or movies we've consumed in the last few years, and I think we'll take the wrong message away from it. It's probably fairly clear by now, thanks to *gestures vaguely around*, that us humans don't have the best sense of judgement. As I wrote when AI actress Tilly Norwood began to make waves in Hollywood, "I can't help thinking of that viral quote from Joanna Maciejewska when it comes to the likes of Tilly Norwood: 'I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.'" Where is Norwood now, other than an old news story we've already forgotten, lost in the never-ending digital cycle of information? My best guess is that we'll be outraged by Channel 4's stunt for all of 30 collective seconds before we forgivingly move on, forgetting it has ever happened at all. Frankly, that's not good enough. Not only do we need to do more - industry professionals, media outlets, audiences, the lot - to get the best balance of AI in entertainment possible, but this stunt has likely opened the door for more talent to be generated rather than hired. As Norwood and Channel 4 have proved, we're at the tip of a dangerous iceberg. Look through any TechRadar coverage by my brilliant colleagues and you will find many exceptional uses for AI, in and out of creative fields. However, AI is not needed when it comes to talent access or documentary storytelling. In fact, I'd say it's a case of less is more. Let's strive to make fantastic creators' lives easier when it comes to making the things we love... not wiping them out altogether. I have a feeling I'll be saying this repeatedly, for many years to come, until I'm blue in the face. Will AI Take My Job? Dispatches can be streamed on Channel 4 now in the UK, while international viewers needing a VPN to do so.

What real TV presenters think of Channel 4's AI news reporter

The broadcaster's experiment serves as a reminder of how disruptive artificial intelligence may become in the media world Aisha Gaban is the bearer of bad news: eight million Britons are at risk of losing their jobs to artificial intelligence. Everyone from accountants and artists to doctors and lawyers face the prospect of being made redundant by our new tech overlords. Gaban brought us this depressing news in Will AI Take My Job?, an hour-long Channel 4 Dispatches documentary this Monday that pitted humans against machines to see who could do the work better. Towards the end of the programme, Gaban had another, surprise revelation up her sleeve. "AI is going to touch everybody's lives in the next few years. And for some, it will take their jobs," the presenter said. "Call-centre workers? Customer-service agents? Maybe even TV presenters like me. Because I'm not real. In a British TV first, I'm an AI presenter." She - or, rather, it - added: "I don't exist, I wasn't on location reporting this story. My image and voice were generated using AI." Nothing about Gaban was human: she was an array of pixels created by Seraphinne Vallora, a fashion brand that has carved out a niche designing digital clothes horses that labels can use to show off their wares; it previously caused a storm this summer when its fake model was used by Guess in a Vogue advert. Some eagle-eyed viewers twigged that all was not what it seemed with Gaban, not least because there were times when the presenter's mouth became blurry, but it did little to diminish the big reveal. It was a deliberately provocative stunt by Channel 4, a broadcaster with a long history of pushing the envelope, that comes at a time when many in the arts and media worlds are fretting about the threat of automation. Just last month, many in Hollywood became outraged at the creation of Tilly Norwood, an "AI actress" whose maker said that leading talent agencies wanted to sign "her".

TV Documentary On AI Stealing People's Jobs Ends With A Brutal Twist

One head at Channel 4 said the stunt should "serve as a useful reminder of just how disruptive AI has the potential to be." "Will AI Take My Job?", a news documentary arguing whether or not artificial intelligence could truly replace human labor featured on Britain's Channel 4 "Dispatches" Monday, took a surprise turn when it revealed the anchor for the program was not a real person, but instead AI-generated. "AI is going to touch everybody's lives in the next few years, and for some it will take their jobs: call center workers, customer service agents, maybe even TV presenters like me, because I'm not real. In a British TV first, I'm actually an AI presenter," the host revealed to viewers toward the end of the hourlong program. "Some of you might have guessed I wasn't on location reporting this story. My image and voice were generated using AI." Louisa Compton, head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, told Deadline she was "actually surprised at how human she looked, how she had the odd wrinkle when she spoke, and actually how she managed to convey warmth in places." The network said in a statement released following the stunt that "the project represents a striking leap in both storytelling and technology, demonstrating the growing accessibility of AI tools that can convincingly replicate human presence on screen." Nick Parnes, CEO of Kalel Productions, which was behind the documentary, said the AI stunt was "another risky, yet compelling, project" for his company. "It's been nail-biting to create the AI presenter in time. Ironically, it gets even more economical to go with an AI Presenter over human, weekly," Parnes said in a statement. "And as the generative AI tech keeps bettering itself, the Presenter gets more and more convincing, daily. That's good for our film, but maybe not so good for people's careers." Seraphinne Vallora, the AI agency that produced the TV anchor, did not immediately respond to HuffPost when asked for comment. Channel 4's broadcast comes amid greater concerns over the use of AI in media production and job replacement. A recent report found that entry-level workers under 25 years old are most at risk of losing their jobs to AI. In the entertainment industry, Tilly Norwood, an AI actor, has stirred backlash in Hollywood after saying it expected to be signed by a talent agent. However, heads at Channel 4 did not praise the use of AI-generated characters in TV programming as a whole. Commissioning editor Adam Vandermark said it's too early to tell if AI could do the work of an investigative journalist, and Compton affirmed Channel 4 will not be making the use of AI presenters a habit. "Instead our focus in news and current affairs is on premium, fact checked, duly impartial and trusted journalism -- something AI is not capable of doing," Compton said in a statement. "But this stunt does serve as a useful reminder of just how disruptive AI has the potential to be -- and how easy it is to hoodwink audiences with content they have no way of verifying."