At MPTS 2026, I heard the same safety blanket wheeled out over and over: ‘We’ll keep humans in the loop.’ But are we clinging to control because we genuinely need to—or because we’re scared to trust the machines?

By Ben Anchor — Wednesday, 27 May 2026 · Listen to the podcast episode

I spend a lot of time at trade shows having the same conversation dressed up in different accents. At MPTS this year, it was metadata, scheduling, monitoring—every vendor had an AI angle, and every vendor was quick to reassure me that humans would remain ‘in the loop’. It’s the industry’s favourite comfort phrase, and I get why. We’re a creative bunch. We take pride in decision-making. But I’m starting to wonder whether ‘human-in-the-loop’ is less a design principle and more a security blanket we’re clutching while the world moves on.

I caught up with Vinay Gupta on the show floor—old colleague, sharp thinker, someone who’s been elbow-deep in broadcast projects for a decade. His take was measured: broadcasters are cautious adopters, we observe before we leap, and we’re still in the ‘watch carefully’ phase with AI. Fair. That’s how we handled cloud, and eventually we jumped in with both feet. But Vinay also said something that stuck with me: in a few years, we’ll start realising that AI agents, given the right guardrails, can make decisions more smartly than us. That’s when the human element gets interesting—not because it disappears, but because its role fundamentally changes.

Here’s where I push back on myself. I’ve spent years arguing that broadcast is a human art, that our instincts for story, tone, and timing are irreplaceable. And I still believe that—up to a point. But I also think we conflate creativity with control. We assume that if we’re not making every micro-decision, we’re not doing our jobs. That’s a hangover from analogue workflows where every frame, every edit, every scheduling slot required a person to sign off. AI doesn’t need that. It needs direction, guardrails, and occasional course-correction—but not constant hand-holding.

Vinay mentioned data strategy as the big differentiator. The companies that know what data they have, how it’s classified, and what they’re allowed to use for AI will be the ones building proprietary intelligence. That’s the next phase: not just leaning on OpenAI or Anthropic’s frontier models, but developing in-house IP that drives decision-making, product development, even content strategy. I agree, but I also think that phase only arrives when broadcasters stop treating AI as a productivity tool and start treating it as a strategic layer. That means letting go of the human-in-the-loop safety net—at least in the places where it’s slowing us down, not protecting us.

I also spent time with Shelly Chambers, who came to MPTS looking at creator content and how AI fits into that world. She’d just been to a talk in the creators’ hub, and the takeaway was almost the opposite of what I expected: forget the shiny tech, go back to the raw, go back to the grit. Listeners don’t want overproduced. They want a story they can return to. I love that, and I think it’s a useful counterweight to the ‘AI will polish everything’ narrative. But Shelly also pointed out where AI does help: editing, scripting, social media assets, metadata tagging for growth marketing. The unsexy operational stuff that makes content discoverable.

That’s the paradox, isn’t it? We want our content to feel human, but we’re happy for AI to handle the scaffolding that makes it work. So why are we so precious about keeping humans in the loop when it comes to scheduling, ad insertion, or even monitoring? Those are operational decisions, not creative ones. If an AI can spot a compliance issue faster than a human, or optimise a schedule based on real-time viewing data, why would we insist on a manual sign-off? The answer, I think, is trust. We don’t trust the models yet. We don’t trust the vendors. We don’t trust ourselves to set the right guardrails. And that’s fine—for now. But ‘for now’ has an expiry date.

Vinay said it’ll take a few years, just like cloud adoption. I think he’s right, but I also think the timeline is compressing. The companies that wait for perfect confidence will find themselves outpaced by the ones that learned to trust imperfect automation. Because here’s the thing: humans in the loop doesn’t scale. It’s a transitional model, not an endgame. And if we’re honest, we’re not keeping humans in the loop because the AI isn’t good enough—we’re keeping them there because we’re not ready to admit it might be.

So where does that leave us? I don’t think broadcast will—or should—become a lights-out, fully automated industry. But I do think we need to get comfortable with AI making decisions we used to reserve for ourselves. That means building data strategies, yes, but it also means building a new kind of editorial culture: one that knows when to intervene and when to step back. Because the real skill in the next few years won’t be prompting an AI—it’ll be knowing when to let it run.

And if you think I’m wrong, come find me at next year’s show. I’ll be the one asking vendors if they’ve finally let go of the safety blanket.