A release that has raised a lot of eyebrows this week is Virtually Parkinson, a podcast where the late Sir Michael Parkinson interviews celebrities and well-known names.
Yep, the late Parkinson. The respected broadcaster and journalist passed away in 2023, so the interviewer in the podcast is an AI model that has been trained to speak like him. As you can imagine, the use of AI caused quite a bit of kickback in the press and on social media, with concerns that it would one day replace hosts and, with that, jobs.
Yet there’s a bit more to the story. It is a collaboration between Mike Parkinson, Michael Parkinson’s son, and a production company called Deep Fusion. The data that fuels the podcast has been licensed from an archive, rather than scraped from the internet (therefore creating jobs, rather than replacing them).
And as discussed in a recent episode on The Rest is Entertainment, the series also makes you think about what it is to be human, “Which is, what is it to be a real human being? And what is it to talk to somebody who isn't real?” Osman said.
May I say that listening to the first episode, featuring an interview with the singer-songwriter Jason Derulo, is a rather surreal and unique experience. The fact that, even though you have Parkinson’s unmistakable voice, Derulo is essentially being interviewed by a computer. I guess the concern is what other podcasts will be influenced by such new technology and whether listeners respond warmly to any AI involvement.
