In October 2024 we launched a podcast hosted by an AI version of Sir Michael Parkinson, and a great many people had opinions about it.
The series was made with the involvement of the Parkinson family. Mike Parkinson, his son, was part of it and defended it publicly when the criticism arrived. That mattered a great deal. It is the difference between a tribute and a theft, and it is not a small distinction.
The criticism was worth taking seriously, and I would rather say so plainly than pretend the reception was uniformly warm. It was not. People asked whether a dead broadcaster can consent, whether an estate speaking for him amounts to the same thing, and whether doing it well makes it better or worse. Those are real questions and I do not think they have easy answers.
Here is where I landed. We did not put words in his mouth that he would have refused. We worked with the people who knew him best and gave them the ability to stop it. We were open about what it was, every single time, rather than letting anyone believe they were hearing the man himself. If you cannot do all three, do not do it.
It reached further than anything else we have made so far. Some of that was because it was good. A good deal of it was because it made people uneasy. On balance I would rather have made something that started a real argument about where this technology should stop than something nobody could be bothered to be uncomfortable about.
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