RTL airs an AI-made court show for five days from 7 September

RTL Deutschland said in a press release, distributed through the German service Presseportal, that it will put an AI-made court show on its main channel. Five episodes of “Ulrich Wetzel – Das Strafgericht” are set for 7 to 11 September at 15:55.

RTL says five episodes run from 7 to 11 September at 15:55

Nothing was filmed again. According to the broadcaster, the team took material that had already been on air and reworked it with three kinds of tool: image editing, synthetic speech, and lip-sync correction, which makes mouth movement fit new dialogue. The production partner is Constantin Entertainment.

Verdicts, ages and family ties were changed in old cases

The changes described by RTL and by the trade title DWDL go well past a new voice track. A defendant who was acquitted in the original is convicted in the new version. A mother and son become brother and sister. A 38-year-old defendant becomes 68. Some main characters change gender.

Max Orgonyi puts RTL’s AI target at 150 million euros by 2030

Inga Leschek, chief content officer at RTL Deutschland, said the company takes “a first open-minded step” and wants to make AI “directly experienceable” for viewers. Max Orgonyi, chief transformation and AI officer, said RTL aims to generate more than 150 million euros of value with AI by 2030. Otto Steiner, chief executive of Constantin Entertainment, called the project “a milestone for the production industry”. Those are the companies’ own words and their own figure, and nobody outside them has checked either.

RTL says editorial responsibility, legal review and rights clearance stayed with people.

The press release does not say how the episodes will be labelled

The announcement leaves one thing open. RTL does not say whether a viewer switching on at 15:55 will be told that what follows was rebuilt by software. That question is live across the industry. Instagram has said it will show fewer people the AI profiles that do not label themselves, and in Warsaw a property developer built an entire brand campaign with generative AI and said so up front.

For media buyers the interesting part is cost rather than novelty. Afternoon slots are cheap to sell and expensive to fill. If an archive can be turned into new episodes for a fraction of the price of a shoot, the arithmetic of the daytime schedule changes, and so does the question of what a broadcaster can afford to keep on air. German public service television is moving the other way, adding rather than rebuilding: ZDF has just added more than 15 themed channels to its app.