October 6, 2026
With the launch of its ninth season, “The Time Has Come” makes radical changes to the television talk scene, employing artificial intelligence techniques to verify guests’ statements and numbers presented live, and display their sources to the audience in real time.
The experiment, led by journalist Marcel Ghanem, relies on an innovative platform that allows the preparation team to research, prepare and review statements while the discussion continues. After editorial review and approval, a summary appears on the screen explaining whether the statement is true, false, or misleading, accompanied by the source and its date, emphasizing that the final decision remains exclusively with the editor.
The platform relies on more than 150 news sources, and has the ability to search the program archive, which includes 357 episodes dating back to 2018. This enables the team to retrieve previous statements by guests, compare their positions and promises over the years, and prepare comprehensive files on them, as well as prepare clips from the episodes and translate them into Arabic, English, and French.
The platform was created by Rudi Hashash, who designed its idea, interface, working mechanism, and editorial rules, and led its development, participating in its programming, in cooperation with Joud Saud on the technical and programming side.
In the context of keeping up with the event, viewers can, as of Thursday’s episode, follow a dedicated interactive page on their mobile phones for free and without the need to download any application, by scanning the QR Code shown on the screen. This page allows you to vote on the episode’s question, follow the audit results, numbers, graphs and their sources, as well as watch the selected clips and share them via the “WhatsApp” application.
Commenting on this step, Marcel Ghanem said: “We cannot provide television for the future with the tools of the past. Artificial intelligence is changing the way media work, and we want to be at the heart of this development. With (the time has come), we are using these capabilities to provide more accurate information, and bring the viewer closer to the truth.”
For his part, the platform’s creator, Rudy Hashash, explained: “Every week, viewers hear numbers and promises, and they have no way to verify them at the same moment. I wanted the program to be able to verify them while the guest is still in place, with the source shown on the screen, and the final decision remaining in the hands of the editor.”
According to those in charge of the project, their research shows that “The Time Has Come” is one of the first Arab talk shows to integrate information verification supported by artificial intelligence into the course of the live episode, with a focus on integrating technical tools with human editorial sense.
