Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.When British chat-show host Michael Parkinson died in 2023, it seemed his distinctive style of interviewing — non-ingratiating, occasionally combative, frequently digging into an interviewee’s childhood — died with him. But now Parkinson has been reanimated through AI and is hosting a podcast series called Virtually Parkinson. In basic terms, this means that AI software has been trained to speak like him and, with the help of research fed into it by producers, ask Parkinson-esque questions. Creepy? Absolutely, though Mike Parkinson, Michael’s son and the driving force behind this series, maintains that his father was, in his later years, open to the idea. We may never know to what extent he considered the ethics of a computer doing a job previously done by a human where the main requirements are curiosity, spontaneity and humanity.In any case, robot Parky is here and “in conversation” first with the Floridian R&B singer Jason Derulo and, in the second episode, comedian Chris McCausland, who was the first blind contestant on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. Both conversations are equal parts fascinating and maddening. I can’t think of another podcast that has left me simultaneously wowed (by the technology — it really does sound like Parkinson) and irritated (by the wordy, repetitive questioning; rather than responding to the guest’s answers, AI Parky simply summarises what they have just said and moves on). Given the host’s shortcomings, it rests on the guests to extract what they can from the questions and keep talking, which they do, admirably. Even so, it all feels like hard work. These are far from normal conversations, in that they are one-sided and stripped of all the elements — laughter, interruption, digression — that turn sterile exchanges into illuminating ones. There is, inevitably, a lack of connection, a blankness behind the familiar voice. If you were on a dinner date with AI Parky, you’d be tempted to fake an emergency after the first course and leave. At the end of each interview, Parkinson Jr and the producers have their own conversation about how they think it went. This turns out to be the interesting part. Virtually Parkinson is a work in progress, we learn, with problems highlighted and tweaks made along the way. This means that later episodes should be an improvement, which makes me think poor Derulo and McCausland may have been short-changed. The Louis Theroux Podcast is also back for a new series, showing AI Parky how it’s done. After a slightly shaky opening episode with Willem Dafoe, who makes clear he has no idea who his host is, Theroux fares better with pop star Jade Thirlwall. The conversation digs deep as Thirlwall of record-breaking girl band Little Mix, first assembled on The X Factor, talks movingly about the iniquities of the music industry and the strangeness of achieving fame and success in your teens.
