ITV's Exposure strand used generative AI for the reconstruction scenes in Terror in the Skies: The Liquid Bomb Plot, an ITV News and ITN film about the 2006 scheme to blow up transatlantic airliners with liquid explosives. Televisual reported the approach on 24 July, two days before the documentary aired on ITV1.
Instead of generating people from nothing, the producers went through Twinnin, a UK start-up where individuals can license their face and voice for AI use or block others from using them. Twinnin found performers who agreed to take part and who get a credit at the end. AI VFX artist and editor Andrew Evans started from their images and then reworked faces and physiques with prompts, so the on-screen figures are stylised characters rather than copies of the actors. AI was also used to recreate places the crew could not safely reach, including the former tribal areas of north-west Pakistan where Al Qaeda ran camps.
Senior producer and director Tim Maynard said the aim was an impressionistic look, separate from both archive footage and ordinary drama. He acknowledged the wider industry argument over AI and said the team chose to keep actors in the process even though it did not have to. Executive producer Natalie Hill said the production wrote its own rules for working with the AI editor, and that editorial judgement, openness and human oversight still matter most. Twinnin founder Katrien Grobler called the project a milestone for the company.
Presented by ITV News global security editor Rohit Kachroo, the film includes interviews with serving MI5, counter-terrorism police and CIA officers, and with ministers involved in the operation at the time.
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