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Don't worry, Whovians—it seems like the Doctor isn't about to regenerate into a bastardized AI version of himself any time soon. Doctor Who writers Steven Moffat and Russell T Davies recently took on the topic of generative AI in a conversation with Radio Times, and while the former acknowledged that the technology is "fascinating," he also derided it in the most "Doctor Who writer" verbiage possible. "My son explained it to me. He said, 'Yes, it can do all these things. It might even get quite good at them. But it takes an immense amount of power to run AI.' Whereas you can run a human being on sunlight and a vegetable patch," Moffat said. "Human beings are amazingly cheap, we’re knocking out human beings every day." Definitely spoken like someone who spends his days writing about anything but. 

Still, Moffat does know his human patterns. "Unlike anything else in history, the more we use it, the less good it is," he continued. "Because the more content that is out there produced by AI, the more it absorbs its own content, and eats its own tail."

That's a very astute—and upsetting—prediction, but Moffat and Davies aren't all doom and gloom. After Davies got a quip in about how "television has run on those principals (absorbing its own content) for a very long time," Moffat continued: "That’s true, but we occasionally have a new idea. I admit, it doesn’t happen very often, certainly not in my case, but occasionally I have a new idea. But [AI] will never have a new idea. That’s not what it does."

Davies, for one, doesn't think the two of them will be replaced any time soon. He's also far more optimistic about the state of television than some recent reports suggest he maybe should be. The overall number of shows on the air may be steadily decreasing, but the showrunner thinks "the rate of new ideas on television is higher than we ever allow for." "We always tend to think that things bumble along at a very average level, and the great outliers are here and there," he continued. "And every month, or every two months—actually, every day, I could find you something brilliant on TV."

Hopefully, Doctor Who's upco*ing Christmas special, titled "Joy To The World," will be one of those brilliant things. The episode will feature Nicola Coughlan and see the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) check into a "time hotel" that allows him to visit every Christmas Day in history. You can watch that adventure on our present Christmas Day, even if you can't travel back in time.