AI is bringing celebrities back from the dead, and it’s just as creepy as it sounds
- Legendary British TV talk show host Michael Parkinson returns in AI form
- Polish radio station From Radio Krakow fires its hosts and uses AI instead
- New Tom Hanks movie Here uses AI to age its stars
AI is being used to launch a new podcast from the late, great British TV talk show host Michael Parkinson, who died in 2023 at the age of 88. While that may sound creepy to some, the project called Virtually Parkinson is fully supported by Mike Parkinson, the son of the legendary talk show host, and his estate.
Virtually Parkinson is produced by Deep Fusion Films and will be an eight-part series launching later this year. Each episode is unscripted, with guests talking to the AI-generated Parkinson through headphones as if he were a real person.
Michael Parkinson, better known as “Parky”, was a legend of the British talk show scene, most famous for his TV show called Parkinson, which launched in 1971 and was a mainstay of British television until 1982. The show was brought back in 1998. and ran until 2004.
You can hear the AI-generated Michael Parkinson speech on a recent episode of the podcast “The rest is entertainment.” The fact that this isn’t Michael Parkinson is particularly creepy because it looks exactly like him. However, his son seems to be fully behind the project. Each episode of the show is marked with signs to indicate that this is an AI-generated Michael Parkinson talking, so there is no attempt to mislead the listener. Talk to Pod newscommented Mike Parkinson: “The podcast is truly a tribute to my father. I want the audience to marvel at the technology, the cleverness and the audacity of the concept, but most of all I want them to remember how good he was at interviewing and enjoy the nostalgia and fond memories. This platform allows his legacy to continue and a new generation of fans to be entertained.”
The future of podcasts
Earlier this year I wrote about NotebookLM, Google’s podcast generator that produces a complete AI-generated podcast in minutes after analyzing an article or YouTube video. What surprised and unnerved me most about Notebook LM wasn’t how it managed to talk knowledgeably about any topic, but how difficult it was to tell that the podcast was entirely AI-generated. The presenters sounded completely human. I knew at that moment that this was just the beginning of AI podcasting.
While every podcast NotebookLM creates currently has the same two presenters, its development is still in its early stages and it certainly won’t be long before a variety of presenters will be available. At that point you have to wonder whether there is a future for people who present podcasts, talk shows and radio shows.
Recently in Poland, the entire presenting team of radio station Off Radio Krakow was replaced by AI bots, and the resulting furore actually helped revive the station’s shaky fortunes. The three Gen Z presenters, Emilia, 20, Jakub, 22, and Alex 23, complete with photos on the the station’s website are completely AI-generated. The channel also does not limit AI to the presenters; she even recently got an interview with Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish cultural icon, even though she died in 2012. Despite the revival of the channel, which previously had hardly any listeners, the reaction to the dismissal of human presenters for AI hosts caused the channel eventually stopped its AI experiment.
AI killed the video star
AI impersonations of human presenters won’t stop at podcasts and talk shows. Chatbot website Character AI has already made headlines and caused some controversy for its unlimited ability to let you talk to long-dead historical figures like Socrates and Cleopatra, as well as more modern celebrities, both real and fictional like Steve Jobs and Harry Potter .
As the capabilities of AI video generation continue to improve, there has been much speculation about AI replicating actors in films after their deaths. One Hollywood star who is reluctant to be represented by AI in the afterlife is Robert Downy Jr. The star of the Marvel Avengers and Iron Man franchises recently stated that “I will sue any future executives who create AI replicas of me “, during an episode of the Continuing with Kara Swisher podcast.
Currently, it seems that AI is increasingly being used to enhance or manipulate living actors in disturbing ways. The $50 million film Here recently used AI to age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright over a period of 60 years, using AI models that require no additional hardware and show the results during filming. It’s a technology that wouldn’t have been possible three years ago, and is far more efficient than using expensive CGI to de-age actors frame by frame.
There is a lot of concern from the creative industries, especially among artists and illustrators, that AI will steal or devalue their jobs as AI image creation becomes better and more realistic. Pretty much Parkinson’s and the movie Here has shown that AI can actually be used to create experiences that were not possible before. It remains to be seen whether audiences will be comfortable with it, at least ethically.
