By the time I sat down to watch, 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 said its use of an AI presenter in its latest Dispatches documentary was a first in TV history. (Russian state media may have a prior claim.) The deepfake technology behind it generated a believable television presenter, who would have been entirely forgettable if it hadn't been for the novelty of the stunt. I'm not sure it's an experiment worth repeating.
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That's not just me being defensive about my job as a journalist; 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.
Pitting humans against AI
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.)
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