The BBC has announced that it has started using generative AI to create marketing material for its TV shows, starting with the cult hit sci-fi series Doctor Who.
The current experiment only includes written material, including emails, push notifications and BBC website search results related to ‘Doctor Who’ marketing. According to David Housden, head of digital media inventory at the BBC, the marketing copy associated with the scheme will first be written by humans. The AI system then generates variations of the copy that must be approved by a senior member of the BBC marketing team before publication.
“Testing and learning about how to inform audiences about what BBC content is most relevant to them underpins our digital marketing strategy,” Housden said in a statement. “Generative AI provides a great opportunity to speed up the creation of additional assets so we can conduct more experiments in real time for more content we want to promote.”
The success of these AI-generated marketing materials is measured by industry-standard metrics, including click-through rate, open rate, and post-impression conversion rate (e.g., the number of people who actually stream an episode of “Doctor Who” after reading the marketing material). ).
The BBC has not disclosed which AI platform it is using to generate marketing material. decryption We contacted the broadcaster but did not receive an immediate response.
All marketing content created by AI will feature a disclaimer, the BBC said. The note informs readers that the email or article is part of a pilot program and “may have been written with the assistance of AI.”
The BBC’s AI trial is currently limited to marketing material (those associated with ‘Doctor Who’), but the potential success of the ratings could encourage the publicly funded broadcaster to double down on AI more widely .
“We want to better understand the creative potential and performance of the technology and get a feel for how our teams feel about using it,” Housden said.
Why do we start with ‘Doctor Who’? First of all, the series is broadcast by the BBC and produced by its subsidiary BBC Studios. This means that the series falls entirely under the jurisdiction of the BBC.
Second, the show, which chronicles the adventures of time-traveling extraterrestrial beings battling aliens, robots and monsters, is ‘thematically’ suited to running AI-infused experiments, Housden said.
In fact, the titular Doctor has encountered AI on screen several times over the series’ 60-year history, starting with the 1966 serial “The War Machines.”
Editor: Stephen Graves