50-Minute AI-Generated Doctor Who Episode Is 'Pretty Good,' BBC Boss Says

The BBC’s new director general has described a 50-minute AI-generated episode of Doctor Who as "pretty good," and suggested that the technology now enabled the creation of content "at the standard of a Hollywood studio." Brittin became boss of the UK’s iconic broadcasting company in May this year, after almost two decades at Google. Now in charge of the BBC, Brittin faces a tough task of making further drastic cuts to the corporation’s spending, while it continues to try and produce world-class programming — including its flagship sci-fi adventure series that’s currently on hiatus after a disastrous few years.

"Somebody sent me a 50-minute episode of Doctor Who that was AI-generated the other day," Brittin said, speaking at the Royal Television Society conference in London this week. "It's pretty good. I mean, it's not going to replace humans, and we'll come on to that" So everyone's a creator. Not all the creativity is bad," Brittin continued. "Everyone's got the ability in their hands — or six billion people have — to create content at the standard of a Hollywood studio." While Brittin does not name the AI project he watched, it is almost certainly the 50-minute first episode of fan-made project The Unmade Season, which features an AI-made continuation of the series.

Having watched a chunk of this myself, I'd say it is as good as you'd expect AI to be — which is to say, almost photorealistic but narratively still pretty flawed. All in all, it’s not very good. And as a Doctor Who fan, it is particularly odd to hear the boss of the BBC offering any sort of praise to content, even non-commercial fan content, that appears to have been generated by regurgitating the BBC’s own copyrighted episodes. While budgets may be tight, here’s hoping this is the extent of the BBC’s relationship to AI with Doctor Who going forward.