Channel 4 viewers have been left not best pleased by The Big Fat Quiz of the Year as the panel show used AI for a segment early in the game.
Jimmy Carr hosted the 2025 instalment on Boxing Day, which saw three teams go head-to-head in a test of their annual know-how.
The celebrity comics on the teams were Roisin Conaty and Katherine Ryan, pitted against the Celebrity Traitors duo of Jonathan Ross and Nick Mohammed with the Last One Laughing alums Richard Ayoade and Lou Sanders taking up the rear.
The opening credits teased what the questions might entail, with the comedians tasked with answering questions on Katy Perry’s liftoff to space, Lily Allen’s barn-burning confessional album on her marriage and the Coldplay jumbotron that was seen the world over.
But before they got to the highs and lows of 2025, the show decided to recreate one of the year’s online trends: making an AI Barbie doll of yourself, which littered Instagram this spring.
These AI-generated images included a miniature action figure boxed doll, alongside a selection of things they regularly use. On Instagram, it was essentially a mass of matcha lattes and AirPods.
The Big Fat Quiz of the Year decided to jump on the trend to create a Barbie of each of the panellists, including Ryan with a Botox needle, Ayoade and a nondescript book, Sanders and healing crystals as well as Carr with a host of different faces.
Despite the comic value, Channel 4 fans were disappointed by the show’s frittered use of artificial intelligence, which requires a high amount of electricity and water to function (during a climate crisis) and has prompted fears it could atrophy critical thinking and degenerate the job market.
Viewers on X were dismayed at the use of ‘AI slop trends’ on the show, with Alice tweeting that the broadcaster should ‘do better’.
Among a number of unhappy viewer reactions, @Polyducks wrote: ‘Disgusted and saddened to see The Big Fat Quiz of the Year using AI to generate gag doll images.
‘Images so half-assed that nobody checked the output. One of them has two magic wands that don’t look like wands, and Jimmy’s is a recycled tax joke from five years ago.’
The Big Fat Quiz of the Year is available to watch on Channel 4.
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