Overview
- ARD alpha will air a multi-day AI focus from Monday, 12 to Thursday, 15 January 2026, with nightly broadcasts from 21:00 on ARD alpha and ardalpha.de.
- The lineup includes documentaries on translating animal vocalizations, AI recreations of deceased people, AI-enabled deception, therapy uses, Silicon Valley adoption, and labor-market effects, plus a live panel.
- Prof. Sabine Pfeiffer and Prof. Frauke Kreuter will join host Birgit Kappel on 14 January to discuss current capabilities, future uses and guardrails for AI.
- A new ‘Kompass: Künstliche Intelligenz und Kompetenz’ survey reports 96 percent awareness and a shift in public understanding from robots to generative tools like speech assistants and AI-made images and video.
- Self-assessed skills lag, especially among women and people with lower formal education, with female respondents calling AI a societal danger more often than before (29 percent, up from 15 percent), and respondents ask for simpler design, stronger user protections and more media education, including in rural areas.