BBC Question Time has been met with disbelief after using artificial intelligence (AI) to create a mock panel featuring Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi.
The show was already facing questions about the lack of balance on the panel – which featured three pro-AI voices from within the industry, a Labour minister known for promoting the use of AI, and the Tories’ shadow technology secretary. Green leader in England and Wales Zack Polanski suggested that tech billionaire Larry Ellison had been allowed to "buy an entire Question Time episode".
The AI-generated panel has raised further questions about how the BBC was presenting the technology, and whether there was appropriate scrutiny of its drawbacks and reliance on copyrighted material. One of the Question Time panellists, Victor Riparbelli, runs an AI video-generation company.
Tonight Question Time features an imagined AI panel made up of historical figures who shaped the modern world Watch the #bbcqt AI special now on @BBCiPlayer and @BBCNews to see what our REAL panel have to say on AI, including how it can blur the lines between reality and fakery pic.twitter.com/G1HVSUyt5t
— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) May 28, 2026
Introducing the show on Thursday evening, host Fiona Bruce said: “On tonight’s panel, one of the most influential figures of the 20th century and the man who helped secure victory over Nazi Germany, our greatest wartime leader, Winston Churchill.
“Frida Kahlo is one of the most recognisable artists on the planet, famous for her many self-portraits. Her work explored gender, class, and race in Mexican society.
“Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence from the British, inspiring peaceful resistance movements across the world.
“Emmeline Pankhurst was the head of the British Suffragette movement. After staging hunger strikes and petitioning the king, she won women the right to vote.”
Bruce then added: “Well, that really would be something, wouldn't it, if that was our actual panel. Of course, it’s not … We of course have a human panel.”
The use of AI to generate the fake panel was widely questioned.
Ed Newton-Rex, the founder of Fairly Trained – a non-profit that certifies AI companies for fairer training data sourcing, said: “Not one person brought up the huge theft of creative work that most generative AI models are based on.
“Not only that, but they used AI video – presumably generated by a model based on theft.
“A huge lack of balance, and a terrible missed opportunity to educate the public about the exploitative nature of generative AI, which I hope people complain about.”
Fergus Navaratnam-Blair, a Green councillor and research director at strategy firm NRG, said: “The thing about these kinds of [generative AI] use cases is that the BBC could have easily made this video before these tools existed – you could do it with actors in makeup, you could do it with traditional VFX.
“The fact that you're only doing it now means you only thought it was worth doing once the cost was essentially zero. That is to say, the content's existence has become a tacit acknowledgement of its own worthlessness.”
Composer Thomas Hewitt Jones, who is from Dulwich where the Question Time episode was filmed, said: "Disgusting take from the @BBC tonight. AI was trained from human creative work without consent. There was nobody on the panel to represent the £145.8 billion UK creative industries.
"The BBC itself used AI slop. It made me so angry that I have just written to the brilliant Deborah Annetts at the [Independent Society of Musicians] about it and hope that it can be pursued and challenged."
Columnist and author Ed Zitron added: “Genuinely offensive on so many levels. What a horrifying and listless age, the opposite of innovation.”
Others questioned what the AI-generated panel would actually say, given tensions such as Churchill's imperialism in Gandhi's India.
Previously, the BBC did not respond to concerns about the lack of balance on the panel.
Asked again, a BBC spokesperson said: “This week’s panel explored the opportunities, risks and moral dilemmas posed by artificial intelligence, with a range of views represented.
"Both our panellists and audience members raised a range of issues around the use of AI, including the opening question on its impact on the job market, as well as its effects on mental health, data and image theft, and the environment."
The Question Time credits said that Dave Waldman had been the "AI SFX designer".
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