BBC Staff Raise Concerns About Director-General’s Praise For AI-Generated ‘Doctor Who’

EXCLUSIVE: Some BBC employees would like Matt Brittin to travel back in time and scrub from the record his comments about an AI-generated episode of Doctor Who.

During a staff town hall on Wednesday, BBC insiders voiced concerns about Brittin’s comments at the Royal Television Society London Convention last week, in which the director-general said that an AI Doctor Who was “pretty good.”

In a question that received 86 upvotes, one staffer wrote: “Matt, can you please rethink your fascination with AI-generated programmes? You recently mentioned a Dr Who one. Dr Who is made in Cardiff. What happened to the BBC’s commitment to bringing arts and the creative industries to all corners of the UK? Young people especially do not want this [AI] content.”

In a second comment seen by Deadline, another insider said: “Is it not time for the BBC to fully reject generative AI? I think Matt’s comments about AI Dr Who and news presenters haven’t been helpful. We’re not a content machine like Netflix and should surely focus on doing things better (not just faster).” The question received more than 30 upvotes.

Brittin joked during the town hall that he “got in trouble” for his Doctor Who comments, which generated headlines in national newspapers. He also expanded on his thinking, stressing that human-led creativity would always be at the heart of the BBC’s mission.

“I was just trying to make the point: Look at the pace of change and what this stuff can do. It’s really important. I’ve spent a lot of time on this, as you can imagine,” he explained.

“We have to understand what it’s capable of, for good and for ill, and that means things like the risk of our journalistic integrity being undermined. You want to know that that is Steve Rosenberg in Moscow and not an AI-generated state actor-backed facsimile of him, and we need to understand those risks.”

He continued: “Equally, AI can help tools on research, journalists using things like Notebook is hugely powerful. So we’ve got to put it to work. What I want to do is accelerate the velocity of testing and learning in this space because it’s vital to the integrity of what we do. It will help us to be more effective in a more efficient in some ways, and there are some creative opportunities that come through too.”

“But I want to be really clear: Humans are leading, and I believe in human creativity, enhanced by whatever tools. We’re surrounded by technology today. It’ll be different technology tomorrow. But the BBC has to stand for human trust, using the best technology.”

The AI Doctor Who debate followed Deadline revealing that producers are bidding to reboot the series on the BBC as part of a competitive tender process. Line of Duty showrunner Jed Mercurio is spearheading a pitch from Hat Trick Mercurio, while STV Studios, the production group behind Blue Lights and Criminal Record, has made an audacious bid to move the show to Scotland for Season 17.