BBC vows no AI fakery in Blue Planet III

The BBC will never lie to viewers about how it uses artificial intelligence.

That was the pledge from Kate Phillips, the BBC's Chief Content Officer, speaking at MIPCOM in Cannes, the international television market where broadcasters buy and sell programmes. Her session included a trailer for Blue Planet III, the BBC's major natural history series, as reported by Deadline.

Phillips said AI is part of TV production now as a research and edit tool. Teams use it to find material and shape cuts behind the scenes.

But she drew a hard line at what appears on screen. The BBC would never use AI for what viewers see in a series such as Blue Planet III. To do so, she said, would be lying to the audience. The BBC can never do that.

Commissioning, the job of deciding which programmes get ordered and made, came next. Phillips said she would absolutely not commission programming based on algorithms.

A commissioner who did that would become "literally a creative carcass," she said. YouTube is not a commissioner, she added. It is a platform.

For viewers, this means two promises in one. AI may help make the programmes. It will not become the pictures, or pick the programmes.