TV Is Dead, But Michael Parkinson Is Alive

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1:19Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hello, Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm alright, you're literally jetting off to the United States of a little country called America for the election straight after this. We are, I'm recording a little bit early because I will be heading out under the auspices of Goalhanger to do an election night broadcast and post-election wrap-up with Alistair, Rory, Dominic Sandbrook and the person I'm doing all of this for, Anthony Scaramucci. Wow. I mean, that's a, listen. Long way to go, but worth it, I think.

1:59Yeah, it's worth it. We'll all be the judge of that next week. I talked to a friend of mine yesterday, an American friend. I said, how are you feeling about the election? And she said, I'm feeling nauseously optimistic. That's very good. But what are we talking about this week before you jet off with the other big wigs? We are going to talk about Michael Parkinson being, I don't think you can say revived. There must be better terminology for it now, but returning as an AI version of himself in an interview series. Yeah, which has been all over the press. And I've looked into the story and it is an awful lot more interesting than you might imagine, that story.

2:34And there's a lot more to it as well. So we'll talk about that. We are going to talk a little bit about the US election and how it's covered and the media landscape over there. And we're going to show you the single chart that explains everything about television. what's happened to it and what's going to happen next in one simple chart. Promises, promises. Promises, promises. I am aware I really have to deliver on today's podcast because you're heading off to meet Scaramucci. So Michael Parkinson, this AI story, it's been all over the papers recently. There's a podcast coming out, it's called Virtually Parkinson, where an AI version of Michael Parkinson is interviewing celebrities and it's been absolute catnip for the newspapers, has been absolute catnip for the industry, as in this sounds like the worst thing that's ever happened.

3:21It's got everything you don't want, which is AI. A beloved national treasure. A beloved national treasure, podcast, that sort of thing. And it's fascinating it came out because around about a month ago, can I play you a message that I received from a very old colleague of mine? She's not very old, but I mean, she's been a colleague for a long time. I received this following message, and genuinely sit yourself down and take a little listen to this. Hello, Richard. This is Michael Parkinson. Firstly, I want to extend my gratitude to your friend and former colleague for the kind introduction. I'm a great admirer of your work, not only on television, but also your impressive turn as a best-selling author.

4:02It would be an absolute pleasure to have you as a guest on my new podcast called Virtually Parkinson. I know that you're quite used to appearing on a podcast. I've heard, though I've not listened to it yet, that you have a quite successful one of your own. Maybe when you're not too busy, you can share some tips with me. Anyway, I'm sure our listeners would love to hear your story on both your career in entertainment and your journey into the world of crime fiction. I look forward to, hopefully, having you join me for a conversation soon. Oh, my God. What do you make of that? Why is my... Well, the first word one always says, terrifying.

4:36I mean, this is obviously just incredibly lifelike. Yeah. I mean, how can that not be him? Even the little pauses and the self-catching in the voice, it's so extraordinary. Now, my first instinct, which I suspect would be everyone's first instinct, is I was uncomfortable about it. And I immediately said no. I immediately said, on the first time I've ever used this phrase, I said, on behalf of humanity, I'm going to turn this one down. And so I did. And my colleague was very good about it. And then all this press started coming out about the podcast. and, you know, a program was sort of launched on it and everyone seemed very upset.

5:13And I started thinking, this colleague of mine is very smart. This colleague of mine is no fool. And when I started reading into it a bit, I thought, I wonder if there's a little bit more to this. I got in touch with the people behind it. And the story behind it genuinely, I think, is very, very interesting to the point where I think at the end of this particular section, we might have a discussion about whether I should actually go on it. I have to say, if you asked me before you played that clip, but I would have had one view and now I've got a totally different one. It is a collaboration, this podcast, between Mike Parkinson, who's Michael Parkinson's son, who owns the archive, all these father's interviews under Parkinson Productions.

5:49He's done all sorts of things for those archive over the years but that's what he owns. And a company called Deep Fusion, which is run by a guy, a few people, the chap I've been talking to is called Benfield. Are they purely an AI company? What are they? Well, they're more of a production company, funnily, and fell into AI sort of accidentally. And I said to Ben, listen, I'm uncomfortable with it. Can I ask you a load of questions? And he said, yeah. He said, I genuinely, I want you to ask me questions. I've seen how this has been reported in the press and I'd love to put a slightly different take to it.

6:19So Ben's company, Deep Fusion, started. He made a documentary about Gerry Anderson, puppeteer and Thunderbirds, et cetera. A genius. A genius, exactly. Troubled genius, as so many of the geniuses are. and he had 36 hours of audio archive of Gerry Anderson and so he and Gerry Anderson's son set about doing a sort of deepfake Gerry Anderson but using the real audio archive and images of Gerry Anderson and when it was announced he said oh my god everyone went absolutely crazy it was called like a meat puppet engineer and all sorts of things but actually when it came out people I think understood this is an incredibly good way of all the things Gerry Anderson would have hated puppeteering not necessarily often at all.

7:01It was very very apt but actually it was an amazing way of using that audio archive and everyone seemed very happy. Recently they did it with Lou Perlman as well in the Backstreet Boys documentary. They had lots of his audio and they had like an interview with him but they made his lips say the audio. They were absolutely open about it and it worked very well. So anyway he did that, you know he said suddenly I'm now the expert in deep fake AI and all this sort of thing so lots of people came and talked to me about various things he said and i got much more involved in it and to the extent that ben has been across almost all the big trade bodies in the uk and the us he's been involved in the procedures how how we use ai you know the legislation that um they're trying to use so he said look this is what i've been doing i've spent the last couple of years the us and uk working out how we use ai in a safe way that you know protects people's incomes and jobs and what have you which comes down to four things essentially when we're talking about this world of faking a human being using their words using a voice you know it's that's the world that he's talking about and he said the four things that he has tried to put in every single contract informed consent from the family or a state or the right zone and by informed consent to really genuinely understanding what it is that's happening and the producer also understanding that it's mutually beneficial for everyone license data so every single thing you're using to train what you're doing has to be owned by someone has to have a rights holder who are not being ripped off so you're not training on anything that you know is things that don't belong to you exactly that um equal remuneration for the ai version of whoever you're creating so whatever you would pay a normal human being you pay the rights holder of the estate of whoever owns all of this archive uh the key one i think no passing off so no pretending it's real he did all that he said and then um mike parkinson gets in touch Now, Mike Parkinson, Michael Parkinson's son, he's been in the industry a long time.

8:54He was what I would call an operator in the way that so many people I've known over the years are an operator. It's just someone who has some IP and you find ways of using it. And he said, look, we've been doing loads of stuff with this archive. I'd love to sort of do an archive podcast as well, just to somehow use all this stuff I've got of my day and interviewing some of the most famous people in the world. He said, and I saw what you've done with Gerry Anderson. I know who you are. Is there something we can do? Mike Parkinson and Ben Field meet up. They chat about it. Ben sort of at the end of the meeting says to Mike Parkinson, what's the point?

9:27And Mike Parkinson goes, you're absolutely right, there isn't one. And so Ben said, look, we shook hands and said, that's a really interesting chat. Lovely to meet you. We are going to do nothing here. So Ben then says, someone completely different asked me to create, this is a terrifying sentence, asked me to create an AI television commissioner for like an away day for one of the big broadcasters, just a sort of, you know, like a... Always starts on the away day. Always starts on the... Exactly. What happens on the away day stays on the away day. So he said he creates this thing and to show it off to the channel, he pitches something to it.

10:01This is where Ben got me. He said, look, I'm good in the pitch meeting. He said, I can look at people. I can understand what they're saying. I can make them laugh. I can, you know, I can gossip and, you know, I can, that's how I sell. He said, I could not do it with this AI commissioner. this AI commissioner, all it would talk about was the idea and drilled down further and further and further, used all of my words against me, could not be charmed in any way. And I generally felt I'm having a very different conversation than I would have with a human being, but in quite an interesting way. So this podcast has been, you know, if you read in the papers, it's Michael Parkinson interviewing celebrities and, you know, it's sort of some weird kind of hybrid and we know it's not him.

10:39And he said, why don't we do a podcast that's split into three parts? The first part is a celebrity comes on and we talk to them about ai and their worries about it the second part is michael parkinson interviews them like a traditional chat show and the third part is what on earth just happened how was that for you what did you think about it what was weird about it what wasn't weird about it and he said you know having michael parkinson there is sort of it's a lovely bow a lovely rapper to make a podcast that you wouldn't otherwise listen to I absolutely buy that as a podcast. Well, this is really landmark.

11:10Yes. It hasn't been reported. No. I see His Majesty's Press have done a great job in communicating that. Bring in Michael Parkinson, Back From The Dead. And also, by the way, most people, you hear a story. That's the point. You only hear the headline. And by and large, we've got 50 things to think about in a day, so you don't go further. But that's why I wanted to talk to Ben, because the people who were involved with it, I just thought it doesn't feel like they would be doing the thing I'm being told they are doing. And talking to Ben and hearing that, you do think, well, that is an interesting podcast, isn't it?

11:36which is what is it to be a real human being and what is it to talk to somebody who isn't real? What is that experience? And I feel like maybe that's valid. Oh, completely. Islam, it would be so interesting. And obviously, as you say, to have been across all those bodies and to understand those issues in that really deep way, but to filter it as always through the prism of a real human experiencing it for the first time, I think it's totally gripping. Can I ask how it more... You've changed your tune since two and a half minutes ago. Yeah, I know, but you see, that's the thing. Yeah. And so sorry, how does the actual interview work?

12:09Well, it's a live interview. So you're sitting there with headphones. You hear a question from Michael Parkinson, from the voice of Michael Parkinson. You reply and Michael Parkinson then carries on from there. So it's live. It's, you know, it's as it happens. If I do end up doing it, I should report back as to whether there were glitches. But, you know, it's not some cobbled together thing where there's someone giving prompts from a gallery, which by the way would happen with a human interviewer it's the AI doing all of the work on your own in a room in the sort of Eames armchair I mean that would be quite I worked with a presenter once I'm not sure he's ever done a chat show but his writer would be in the gallery by the way this is a presenter I absolutely love and a writer I love the writer would be in the gallery and he would literally just have open talk back and he would just keep talking and the presenter would say the thing that the writer was saying just all the way through it was amazing so listen is that AI it's fascinating listen we heard we heard the beginning which was amazing and you know Ben says look we train it and train it and train it and still every now and again like it'll do something so weird that you're like okay we have to we have to retrain that but it is like a lot of the AI creativity it's all down to prompts it's all down to what you put in it's all down to how this thing is trained but essentially I would be lying if I told you I knew exactly the process that goes into it but he has over the years done this many many times with many many personality types like a tv commissioner I know what a tv commissioner here are the prompts to make a tv commissioner seem like a tv commissioner so he's worked with Mike Parkinson saying here are the prompts that make Michael Parkinson seem like Michael Parkinson and feel like Michael Parkinson but is it happening in real time so oh I see that's what I meant are you sitting there and you're actually being interviewed you're not saying wait while I reboot it and then it's going to come up with question two yes there's not someone in the gallery saying and now say this michael parkinson bot it is genuinely an artificial intelligence working out what you just said and then working out you're sitting there with your earphones on and he's talking into your ears and the thing i love about it is you know neither of them are saying oh and it's going to be amazing it's going to be like being interviewed by parkinson they're both saying it's going to sound like you're being interviewed by parkinson but what is that like and how is it different and what does that mean about what's happening in this conversation to all intents and purposes you are having a conversation with the most congenial erudite man uh you know who has ever worked in british broadcasting but you are just talking to a computer no it's not there's god there's so much to talk about with this but there it's interesting in the week where people have been talking about being able to talk to dead versions of their own relatives and um actually that new meta headset that's currently at the ridiculous prohibitive price point hasn't even been released but you can sort of go into your old family photos um and i wonder how mike parkinson i mean psychologically psychiatrically how has all this been for him well this is what i think about and that's why it's a more interesting story because if i was mike parkinson and i read the newspaper reports in the last week i'd be like guys i mean i mean it's my dad and and i'm a really good tv producer so maybe you know i know what I'm doing.

15:23I think that he has spent so long on that archive with his dad, while his dad was alive, and he'd done live shows and all sorts of clip shows and things like that. And by the way, if that sounds exploitative at all, pretty much the whole of television now is how do we package up our archive? And also, we were talking only very recently about legacy and the publishing houses, always trying to keep authors' legacies alive in different ways. Not as a sort of trolley dash, but in lots of ways, because they believe in those writers and it's nice to kind of try and find ways of helping them to reach new audiences this will certainly reach new audiences i think so and you know what would michael parkinson not be interested in being a novelty like a sideshow act like a kind of i am a computer michael parkinson what i suspect he would be interested in is what on earth is happening with the way we talk to people and what we think about creativity and what we think about conversation i think he would be interested in that and will they be able to do you think get somebody someone who is um very clever has been interviewed by him in the past for real to do this oh that's fine i assume so yeah i really hope they do that because to say how is it different or how wasn't it hopefully someone who's slightly more kind of thinker end of his various guests you know not emu or whatever not that i you know i love it but an ai emu and an ai of michael parkinson would be Yeah, that's got to show.

16:46And talking to Ben, especially, the thing it reminded me of more than anything at all. So the headline comes out and you do worry about it. And anyone who works in the television industry now is understandably terrifying. Because, you know, an industry has been hollowed out, but for other reasons, I suspect, which we actually we will get onto when we talk about that chart later. So everyone does worry about it. But talking to Ben about it, I just feel like I'm talking to any producer I've been talking to in the last 30 years. and I especially feel like I'm talking to producers I would talk to 20 years ago who said you know we have to do stuff with online and this has to be on YouTube and I'd be going oh god I just want to go to the studio and like you know do like normal proper telly and all of those people turned out to be right all of those people were fascinated with technology and wanted to use it in a creative way and wanted to do something unusual and different and my creativity which is you know the sort of creativity that gets a lot of publicity is the sitting down with a blank piece of paper and writing something down that's funny or thinking of a quiz idea.

17:45And that's the thing we fetishize. But actually there's a, you know, the creativity of someone saying the world is really becoming an interesting place. How do I use these new things? And that's what Ben reminds me of absolutely is like a proper smart producer who's thinking, what's the most fun, interesting thing I can do here? I'll find a different way to talk about it than the kind of two ways we have at the moment, which is say, this is terrifying and we can't do anything about it. and other people saying this represents the most amazing, you know, multi-generational opportunity. And to find somewhere in between of all of that, I have to say, I think you have to do it, Richard.

18:22Come on, why not? Why wouldn't you? It'd be interesting, right? Given you can ask anything. Oh, you've got to do it. I guess you can't offend AI Michael Parkinson. You know, if he... That's why that, no, I don't, no, that's disrespectful. Imagine if AI Michael Parkinson walked out and said, you know, Richard, I've heard enough. that's my Michael Parkinson impression that was probably the first draft of the AI Michael Parkinson but you know I do think in amongst the kind of terror at AI and a lot of which is absolutely right this feels like a false flag this feels like a thing where actually someone's doing something rather interesting someone's trying to shine a light on what AI is and Ben with his track record of what he's done and what he's been involved with I certainly think that the road he is going down he is paving with good intentions I think for sure where that road leads who knows but um having spoken to him and having really heard the idea I went as you have just done from this is an idea which I'm going to turn down on behalf of all humanity yeah to oh I'd actually be quite interested in doing that and you know the manpower involved would be absolutely equal to any other podcast probably more so there's more people involved in that so more people are being employed doing it At another point, not now, we will talk about how the TV industry is using AI and it's using it increasingly in lots of interesting ways.

19:43Almost always not in the ways that are making the headlines, but it's interesting the people whose jobs are at risk. But this, to me, does not feel like a threat to anyone's livelihood. And actually, it's the opposite. It's sort of a way for Ben, listen, it's a way for Ben to make money because he's a producer and it's a way for Mike Parkinson to make money because he's a producer. but it's also a way of saying we need to be having this debate about what is real, what is not, what is fake, what is not. Well, the way they've structured it, as you said, in those three parts is in the spirit of almost philosophical inquiry.

20:12So it is, I mean, that's one of the ways it would be helpful to talk about it. Should I tell them instead of calling it virtually Parkinson, they should call it Michael Parkinson in the spirit of philosophical inquiry? Well, I think that probably will be the title they end up going for. It's just a working one at the moment. By the way, happy to be proved wrong, I might be entirely wrong about this, but my instinct is that what looked like a bad news story is actually a very, very interesting story made by very, very interesting people. And yeah, now I really want to listen to it. Shall we just listen to another five second clip with all of that in mind and hear him again?

20:46Yes, please. Hello, Richard. This is Michael Parkinson. Firstly, I want to extend my gratitude to your friend and former colleague for the kind introduction. So there it is. And I do think, listen, there are enough real human beings doing interview podcasts as well. It doesn't feel like it's... It's just one presenter. There are, as you say, many, if not more people working on this particular thing who are real humans. Yeah. Shall we go to some ads? Let's do that. Lowe's knows how to help make your home holiday ready for less. Get Select Style Selections vinyl flooring for just$1.99 per square foot and have it installed before the festivities begin.

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22:41Welcome back, everybody. We are going to talk a bit about election coverage. We are. After that, don't forget, we got the one single chart that explains everything about television. It really does explain everything about television as well. But yeah, so you're about to head to the US. I understand how UK election coverage works, but America have a whole other history of election broadcasts. They have a whole other history of election broadcasts. And this time, of course, they are gearing up for not just election night, but what might be, you know, election week. Election week spills over into civil war.

23:15I'm mirthlessly joking. So they are preparing. It could be the start of a long one because obviously elections are intensely close these days as they never used to be. They don't have those sort of same dramas, those sort of same very British funny dramas, which, you know, whenever you look at a British election, you're going to go to 650 counts where there are people dressed as bins and stuff standing on the stage in a community centre. And I mean, it's always funny. I absolutely love it, you know. But they don't have that. But it is the biggest ratings for news in America in the four-year cycle, unless something absolutely enormous happens.

23:51It's like the World Cup for American politics. It is, and it's going to go on a long time. They need all this because, you know, advertisers, that's another thing that people don't realise, is that advertisers have really struggled in the last few years with even committing to advertising on news channels because the country's become so much more polarised. Your sponsoring opinion that has become more and more strident and you may not agree with. That, by the way, is why so many news channels are backed by billionaires, because actually, very difficult to turn a profit because big blue chip advertisers will not advertise in politics these days because it's a trap.

24:22Why risk it? What's your name going to be next to you? Anyhow, it's quite interesting, the history of it. And as a television spectacle, so many things in the American century, the 20th century, we understand of as television spectacles because that's how they came. In 1948 was the first time they did anything on television at all. They broadcast the returns, but it was very boring. and also they had sort of chalkboards, literally. And they'd made a mistake. They had the wrong result in their mind. They thought that Thomas Dewey was going to beat Harry Truman. So they had that wrong. So there was already like, I didn't like the election coverage, even though there never had been.

24:56Oh, pollsters. Oh, dear. They didn't do it very well. That was the first time out. Now, 1952 was Eisenhower versus Adlai Stevenson. Don't tell me you won because I haven't watched. Well, by that stage, a third of the households had TV and only 1 % had had them in 1948. It grows so quickly, American... You know, by the time we get to 1960, 90 % of households have them. The explosion of TV is kind of incredible. But NBC and CBS both decide, because it's a space race, it's sort of futuristic, it's 1952, to use computer forecasting. Wow. Yeah, and they talk about it for a long time in advance. Like, we're going to have a computer on election night.

25:34It's got the voice of Michael Parkinson. By the way, this is the first election where you see TV ads. And if you go back, go and have a look at them, because I was watching some of them last week. Look for the jingle, I Like Ike. You think, my God, was that what political TV ads were like? Ike being Eisenhower. Ike being Eisenhower. So anyway, ooh, computers. Univac is the CBS computer. Univac? Yeah, the Univac. That's like Henry Hoover. I know. It weighs eight tonnes, and it's going to tell you who's going to win the election, right? Wow. NBC had the Monrobot, only the size of an office desk.

26:05I mean, this would be like, you know, one tiny app on your iPhone now. but it was the whole sort of Tomorrow's World vibe of it all. Now, the UNIVAC, really early on in the evening, calls the election for Eisenhower 438 to 93. The UNIVAC team think, what on earth? They are afraid to even tell the CBS reporters, never mind CBS. Because that's an insane landslide. They think it's an insane landslide and they think, we can't really tell CBS reporters, let alone the viewers. They eventually do tell CBS reporters who are like, yeah, no, I don't think so. In the end, it's 442 to 89. So they missed this great opportunity to say, by the way, computers know quite a lot about this stuff.

26:43Okay. But it took till the 1970s for it to become this dominant part of it. But it was always in black and white. So we didn't have this idea of red or blue states or anything like that. And in 1976 was the first time they did one of those maps and they had to slot coloured gels into these cut out plastic spaces, you know, as each state was called. I love all those technologies. on YouTube you can see all the UK coverage and US coverage I spent the most wonderful few days looking at all of this and it's fascinating to actually be able to see it now and to go back and see it but at that stage they thought oh red is always a left wing colour and so red states were democrat states it's only in the 90s that this whole idea of red and blue states and people sort of settle on a colour for the parties is that right in the 90s?

27:28and that's where it all comes from television that's why we talk about red states or whatever anyway they all combine together to have one of those companies that will, one exit polling group basically. Which we have in the UK, you know, we all rely on the same exit poll. We all rely on the same exit poll, which is done by the brilliant professor John Curtis and his team, who is amazing. But they did it for the 1990s, 1990 midterms. And after that, they used it. But only until 2000, where you may remember, they called Florida wrong. And that's it. It's now polarised. Everyone's fallen apart. No one has, they don't have anything that's the same.

28:02They don't have one all agreed on thing. In 2008, they had holograms and they were really bad. Wow. Like, so Will.i.am would turn up in the studio with a sort of blue ring around him to talk to you about what he thought was going to happen. But if you look now at what they're planning to do, everyone is settling in for a week. In the old days, you'd think, it's been really exhausting covering the election. We got one last push and then, you know, by midnight, we'll probably all know. And obviously they continue broadcasting, but for breakfast, you were going home. Now it's like, buckle up, because I remember last time with John King.

28:36I mean, my middle child, who was very young at the time, got completely obsessed with it and would literally run in from school and put CNN on because it went on for days, which is quite weird. You all become obsessed with these things. But it tells you a lot about what's happening now. Like News Nation has got a special broad, which is a sort of right-leaning news channel. They're going to have a special broadcast from Georgetown Law School, which just tells you... Okay, that tells you everything you need to know. The venues that you used to have are now different. I mean, disinformation, which has become such a loaded word, but they think because there's going to be so many days in which it's sort of still unfolding or being challenged, needless to say, lots of things will spring up on social media.