Question Time is normally a discussion around UK politics, with the most prevalent subjects in recent months being by-elections, immigration, Iran and the economy. However, the latest episode was a panel more akin to the technology stage at the SBC Summit in Lisbon.
Raising eyebrows on social media, a special edition of the show analysed AI, a subject that has been hotly debated across iGaming and is now taking centre stage in the mainstream.
Although a somewhat peculiar booking, the cultural significance of the tech getting a whole show on the BBC’s flagship political panel show shouldn’t be understated, and we are reflecting on four key takeaways from the hour-long episode.
AI must not break the talent pipeline
AI pioneer Mo Gawdat warned that AI replacing human jobs is not sustainable for economic growth, as although businesses will cut costs – capital, GDPR and income will all be eradicated, and subsequently people won’t be spending back into the economy.
However, fears that businesses are looking to replace jobs with AI is a very real one though, specifically for entry-level jobs where many cut their teeth learning about new industries and systems before transitioning to becoming leaders.
You don’t need to be a genius to see that AI cutting the chain at the early stages will have a significant impact on the future workspace.
Conservative Julia Lopez MP criticised the red tape that the government has put in place for youth employment as being a further obstacle in a job market that is now even more competitive with the addition of AI.
She emphasised that ‘you can’t wish away this technology, but you can try and build a really strong ecosystem’, as she urged the government to provide greater tools to businesses to win the race.
Lopez also levelled criticism at companies that are bypassing the building of a talent pipeline and instead turning to AI, a decision that she believes they will regret in the long term.
Labour’s Darren Jones pledged that the government will create wealth to protect services, as he also praised the workers’ rights bill, which makes it harder to sack workers.
Should we be worried about deepfakes?
The show started on a rather surreal note when host Fiona Bruce introduced a panel featuring AI-generated models of the historical figures Winston Churchill, Frida Kahlo, Mahatma Gandhi and Emmeline Pankhurst.
While the stunt was made in jest in this instance, it underlines a wider concern about the power of AI to generate ‘deepfakes’ for nefarious purposes.
Already in the gambling industry, MGM China was forced to speak out after a deepfake video was distributed in September 2025 of its Chair, Pansy Ho, offering a fictitious investment plan.
More high-profile incidents have involved explicit images of Taylor Swift being spread on X and the voices of personalities such as Steve Harvey and Joe Rogan being used to promote a scam that promised people money from government funds.
There is a real danger that illegal gambling firms seeking out notoriety may choose to utilise AI to generate content featuring high-profile celebrities who have no connection with the firm to advertise to unsuspecting customers.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s Grok came under fire for facilitating the ‘nudification’ of social media images. Jones emphasised that there is a real danger regarding the speed of the development of technology for curtailing such instances that the UK government is currently fighting.
He said: “We’ve banned nudification apps in the UK. But one of the things we’ve had to do now is we’ve had to give the Technology Secretary legal powers in advance of consulting on the things we want to change in the future so that they can legislate more quickly without having to wait.”
Furthermore, the question has to be asked with the rapid evolution of AI tech – whether it could be utilised to bypass safer gambling and AML frameworks. It is vital that specialists are ahead of the curve on this one before it comes to pass.
‘AI is the ultimate equaliser’
Gawdat asked why there is not a British ChatGPT, as he lamented the lack of innovation in the UK and the European Union compared to the US and China.
He said: “The whole point is that AI, for the first time ever, is the ultimate equaliser. Yet everywhere in the world believes that you need to import ChatGPT. You can build the next Oracle, the next Microsoft, the next everything. It is the ultimate equaliser and yet [the UK] is importing it.”
Although this question may be seen as rather flippant given the established dominance of platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, the sentiment breaks open the wider point of AI enabling even the smallest companies to compete on a global scale when used in an effective way.
For companies with the right know-how, harnessing AI could be their ticket to the top, and industries across the business spectrum tend to be stronger when there is healthy competition.
While the potential is there, Gawdat cautioned that appropriate regulation must be in place to support the innovation required to make this a reality. In the case of the EU and UK, he said that the respective authorities have not legislated AI in a way that ‘enables innovation’.
This is a lesson that can be learnt by regulators in all businesses, including gambling, where the reach of regulators is something that is discussed on an almost daily basis.
For any industry to thrive, regulators must ensure that they effectively balance guardrails with the freedom to innovate and move the sector forward.
Don’t be fooled by the humanity layer
The role of AI in companionship is something that is hard to come to terms with, but as Lopez emphasised, this is a machine that is very good at convincing people this is reality.
Gawdat warned against encouraging ‘vulnerable humans to form connections with chatbots’, as he added that ‘we have taught AI to manipulate us into outsourcing our human connection through a tiny little screen’.
However, Victor Riparbelli, Chief Executive Officer of Synthesia, underpinned that people take a more honest approach to conversations with a chatbot, adding that there are “so many positives” to AI chatbots, and says we should focus on “the problems in front of us”, not hypotheticals
This part of the discussion felt pertinent to safer gambling’s relationship with AI, where AI can be used to assist, but that assistant role should not be overly heavy-handed. Lived experience is crucial and must not be substituted for a machine that holds a strong humanity layer.
Laura Gilbert, Senior Director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute, suggested that in her preferred future, AI could be built in a way that sits alongside humans and allows both the technology and people to do what they do best.
She said: “You could build a system that puts AI next to the human, works with the human, and pulls together the strengths of the human and the AI to create medical professionals that were safer and faster and giving the humans support you want.”
Additional reporting by Christian Lee
