Michael Parkinson AI podcast interviews feel like 'therapy' to guests

The late Michael Parkinson was Britain's greatest talk show host, and a new podcast is replicating his interviewing style using AI technology, which producer Ben Field tells Yahoo UK has had hugely positive feedback from the stars who have already appeared on it.

Parkinson's son Mike has collaborated with Deep Fusion Films on the project Virtually Parkinson, which uses archival footage and recordings from his father's extensive back catalogue to inform the AI recreating his voice and interviewing technique. Field reveals to Yahoo UK that those who have spoken to the AI version of Parkinson have been surprised by how moving they've found the experience, likening it to "therapy" because of its lack of judgement.

"It's a completely new style of interview because, what happens when you're being Interviewed by a human, is you pick up on micro expressions — whether it's noises of affirmation that, or a sigh here or there, or a laugh — we all do it very naturally," Field explains. "And that encourages you to keep talking or it discourages you. What AI Sir Michael does is he doesn't do any of that, he just listens. He lets people talk and there's no judgement or any of that because it's an AI.

Listen: Hear what the AI Michael Parkinson sounds like

"There's no agenda, there's no inherent bias in anything that he's saying, anything that he's hearing, and therefore it doesn't lead into questions, it is just a truthful exploration which actually most of the guests we've had so far have found that to be... I think one guest referred to it almost as therapy because suddenly they gave something away that they didn't expect to be talking about.

"They ended up talking about their mother and their relationship with their mother, the way that actually impacted their work life and so on. And they've never gone down that route, they never expected to go down that route and it was just the most wonderful thing to see somebody really open up.

"Because you are just in a room with a microphone, essentially talking to yourself, it's a safe space or it feels like a safe space. Obviously the first 10 minutes of any interview are slightly awkward and you learn what the style is and how it all works, but once they get into it they find they're very free to talk about whatever they want to talk about and that leads them down some very interesting paths."

Field adds that it is the AI podcast host's ability to mimic warmth through its recreation of Parkinson's voice is what makes it work so well: "It became very obvious very quickly that this exploration of the relationship between AI and humans was so positive, and I think there's a great juxtaposition between the warmth and compassionate voice of AI Sir Michael and the idea of a cold, uncaring AI."

Parkinson Jr came to Deep Fusion Films with the idea for the AI podcast based on a conversation he was having with his father prior to his death in 2023. The talk show host was reminiscing about the stars he didn't get to have on his talk show and would have liked to have brought them back in some way to make it happen — though Field stipulates that AI "wasn't the buzzword" used at the time, it was DNA.

So Field, who has written or co-written all the policies about the ethical use of AI in the film and TV industry, and Parkinson Jr got to work on ideas that could reflect, in some way, what the talk show host had wanted.

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"One of the burning questions I had from my from my policy days was definitely 'why?'" Field says. "What we really didn't want to do is we didn't want to be pushing a presenter out of work because that is one of the biggest things that's levelled at AI — that it's putting human creatives out of work — and I wasn't comfortable doing that, and neither was Mike.

"Very quickly we realised that there was no other podcast around that was exploring the relationship between AI and humans, so we said, well, what actually happens when you have an AI interview a human guest? What's the dynamic like there? Do you give more away? Do you give less away? Does it become introspective? What does it do? We just don't know. And we said right well, actually, that is an innovative method of exploration."

Deep Fusion Films built a model that was able to replicate Parkinson's voice using archival footage owned by Parkinson Productions, with Field saying it "imbues his personality, his interviewing style and his voice" to make new interviews and "everything" about the podcast "is safe" because "it hasn't been trained on any materials that we haven't licensed".

Field isn't surprised by the negative reaction to the podcast announcement, though he feels the reason the notion of AI is such a big topic of debate is because of fear: "It's very, very understandable that people get het up about it, but whilst they think it's from the right place unfortunately it does actually come from a place of a fear of the unknown.

"When you're going through that position of change, and experiencing that fear, the first thing you do is you fail to accept that it is fear, but ultimately I think that is where it comes from."

He adds: "I tend to ignore anything that appears on socials, but the big thing is always 'you've got rid of a human presenter' and the answer to that is well, no, actually we haven't because this podcast would not have been commissioned had it not been for the fact that what we're doing is exploring the relationship between a human and AI. You can't have a human at the other end in order to explore that, one of them needs to be an AI.

"I know that when people actually listen to the podcast they will understand why this couldn't have been any other way, and I hope they will warm to it. But the reaction is always going to be the same, everybody is resistant to change and is fearful of the unknown.

"Ever since the Terminator days AI is always presented as something that is life threatening, whether it is physically threatening as with Terminator, or whether it is life as we know it ending as it's going to put you out of job and you'll be destitute. I completely understand all of those concerns, they're all very, very reasonable places to come from.

"But as soon as you start to learn and be educated on how AI works, and how it is being implemented, and all the safeguards, checks and balances that the industry is doing in order to safeguard creativity — and make sure that humans are absolutely the very essence of every decision we make — then you start to explore the space in a very different way."

"AI is a much more nuanced, it has to be a much more nuanced debate at the moment because it is so new," he continues. "I think that we have to respect Mike Parkinson and Parkinson Productions' wishes, and say actually this is something that he would have liked, and he would have been interested in.

"We think that it preserves, elongates and preserves Sir Michael's legacy."

Virtually Parkinson will debut in the coming months.