ITV News and ITN used Twinnin, a UK likeness-and-voice licensing platform, to generate the reenactment sequences in the Exposure documentary "Terror In The Skies: The Liquid Bomb Plot", published around 24 July and presented by ITV News Global Security Editor Rohit Kachroo1. Twinnin recruited performers who consented to their likeness being used and who received an end-title credit for it.
Andrew Evans, the AI visual-effects artist on the programme, altered facial features, body shape and physique through prompts, so what reaches the screen is a stylised character rather than a digital copy of the contributor. AI also rebuilt locations too dangerous or remote to film, including the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas of northwestern Pakistan, where Al Qaeda ran training camps in the early 2000s. ITV News has used AI in entertainment output before; this is its first publicly disclosed use in current affairs.
Two different answers to the same regulatory problem are now visible in the same month. Eurovision Sport and Camb.AI shipped AI-generated commentary carrying an on-screen AI label from 16 July. One approach labels the output after the fact. The other licenses the input before it is made, with consent and payment agreed at source.
EU AI Act Article 50 will compel the labelling. Nothing compels the licensing, which is what makes Twinnin's category worth pricing rather than dismissing. A broadcaster reconstructing a live criminal case on screen wants a paper trail showing every face was licensed, because the exposure is defamation and image rights rather than transparency compliance. Consent at source, sold as a service, is a product with a buyer before it has a rulebook.
