Oprah Winfrey Is Hosting an AI Special Tonight: What We Know [CNET]

The iconic host’s one-hour program airs tonight on ABC.

Oprah Winfrey is planning to tackle the sprawling topic of artificial intelligence in a one-hour special airing on ABC tonight. Her new program, AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special, will include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and technology reviewer Marques Brownlee.

“The reason why I wanted to do this special is because I’m right where most of you all are with AI,” Winfrey said in an Instagram Reel posted earlier this week. “You hear it all the time and you hear it’s going to change our lives, and we are aware of it on our phones and you’re aware of it in your cars and you’re aware of it for certain areas of your life, but what is really coming? What is happening with AI?”

In addition to people working in the AI industry or around it, the show also includes FBI Director Christopher Wray, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson and the co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, who will presumably discuss the risks AI poses to creators and to humans in general.

The AI special is scheduled to air at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, Sept. 12, and it will be made available the next day on Hulu.

Early criticisms of Oprah’s AI special

Critics are already taking the program to task for its guest list, which some are saying will tilt the content in favor of promoting AI instead of taking a hard look at its dangers. Among them are artist and activist Karla Ortiz, who posted a thread on X asking Winfrey to rethink the special’s content. 

In an X post, Los Angeles Times tech columnist and Blood in the Machine newsletter writer Brian Merchant called the special an “extended sales pitch for the generative AI industry at the moment when its fortunes are flagging and the AI bubble is threatening to burst.”

Winfrey also faced criticism back in March when her last special, focused on the weight-loss drug Ozempic, aired on ABC. 

In a case of AI imitating life, a video purporting to show Winfrey interviewing Sam Altman for the special actually shows an animated version of Winfrey interviewing herself before cutting to a cartoon figure who looks more (but not very much) like Sam Altman.