FOX Nation’s AI Houdini Shows How Documentary Veterans Kept AI Honest

Harry Houdini died 100 years ago on Saturday, on Halloween 1926. This month, he sat down for an interview.

Houdini: Back from the Dead, a three-part AI documentary that premiered on FOX Nation on October 14, reconstructs the Hungarian-born escape artist’s life through AI-generated imagery, archival research and actors’ performances.

FOX Nation, Fox News Media’s streaming service, says the series was its most-watched program in its premiere week and has remained in its top 10 since. The company did not provide viewing figures, and the ranking has not been independently verified.

Behind the imagery are two veterans of factual television. Brian Armstrong began as a journalist in Australia, spent about a decade making wildlife and science films for National Geographic and founded Red Rock Films in 2010. Jonathan Towers, vice president of development for FOX Nation, founded Towers Productions in 1989, which made American Justice and Gangland.

Neither treated Houdini as license for AI to invent history.

“Every image of Houdini, every word has a reference in the archive,” says Towers, in a joint video interview with me alongside Armstrong.

How FOX Nation And Red Rock Built An AI Houdini

FOX Nation was looking for its first big AI project, Towers said in an email exchange. Houdini fit because “he is all about magic and AI feels like magic as well.”

The script came first. “AI did not touch the script,” says Armstrong, who wrote all three episodes from what he calls “everything that Houdini wrote or interviews he did, his diaries.” He kept the books beside him during our interview. When viewers question a line, he says, “I can reach down here and I can pull up their diary and say, yep.”

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Where the record is uncertain, the series attributes rather than asserts. Houdini’s brother tells the story of Houdini being shot in the hand. “His brother said it did, so we can attribute that to his brother,” says Armstrong.

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