The BBC’s AI Question Time is forced to forget about Che

The BBC’s Question Time raised a few eyebrows last week with an advert for a special edition on artificial intelligence, featuring, as it did, AI-created avatars of some of history’s most important figures on the panel.

One the ad, shared widely online, host Fiona Bruce introduced “one of the most recognisable artists on the planet”, Frida Kahlo, Mahatma Gandhi, who “led India to independence from the British”, Emmeline Pankhurst, “the head of the British suffragette movement” and “one of the most influential figures of the 20th century and the man who helped secure victory over Nazi Germany”, Winston Churchill.

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All very impressive – but not quite what was promised. The Radio Times preview of the show said that it would feature the first three along with Che Guevara, the Marxist revolutionary, and even showed the image of him sitting behind the QT desk in his military garb.

What happened? Rats in a Sack heard the BBC had an issue with Guevara, not because of any fear of a right wing backlash from featuring such a hard left figure, but because… of image rights. How ironic for a Communist icon!

There is a long-running dispute over the right to use Che’s image, and especially the iconic “Guerrillero Heroico” photo of him taken by Alberto Korda in 1960 and later manipulated by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick and sold as a stylised poster. Both Korda’s descendants and Fitzpatrick have claimed copyright, while the Guevara family is another interested party.

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Still, at least the BBC’s long-dead panel would have displayed some balance. On one of the biggest issues facing society at the present time, every single of the actual panel who appeared on the show – Labour’s Darren Jones, shadow science secretary Julia Lopez, former chief business officer of X Mo Gawdat, Laura Gilbert of the Tony Blair Institute and businessman Victor Riparbelli – are AI enthusiasts, even if Gawdat has expressed reservations about its dangers.

Others moaned about the AI special precisely because it wasn’t important enough. Like the Daily Express, which posted a number of articles online about it, including ‘BBC Question Time viewers issue same complaint minutes into show’, which rounded up a number of comments on X from users including “Looks borinng [sic] tonight, roll on next week for a proper topic”.

Columnist Bethany Whittingham, meanwhile, laid into the show in a piece headlined ‘Question Time needs to apologise for wasting licence fee – latest episode is disgusting’. “I have no issue with discussing AI on the show; I think it has its place, but does it need an hour-long special dedicated to the topic?,” she sniffed. “Probably not.” One might think an Express journalist might have more interest in AI, what with the title constantly getting rid of its staff to replace them with it.