60 Minutes aired an AI version of its own correspondent

60 Minutes opened its October 4 broadcast with a correspondent who is not a person. The CBS newsmagazine had the AI video company Runway build a synthetic version of correspondent Jon Wertheim for the studio intro, and the show says the turnaround took about five minutes.

The episode, "Who Needs Humans?", examined artificial intelligence and the future of work. In the transcript CBS News published, the opening is labelled "AI Jon": it reads a script about America's tech titans meeting President Trump and about whether AI takes jobs. The real Wertheim then walks in and says, "That right there? Not me... That was AI."

That line is the frame of the piece. A report about automation opened with the programme automating its own correspondent, and the script underneath the synthetic delivery was written by people, according to Axios. The show told Axios how the intro was made. "We did this by sending one of his past intros from a previous story Jon recorded, and then giving them our new script," it says. "Five minutes later, we had an AI Jon Wertheim," who was shown onscreen next to the real one.

What the 60 Minutes AI version was

The synthetic Wertheim, which CBS labels "AI Jon", read the programme's studio intro as the two of them, real and generated, stood side by side. It was a demonstration the broadcast made itself, not a real performance by Wertheim.

Runway did the generation. Which Runway product or model produced the intro is not stated by CBS, Runway or Axios. One aggregator headline says "Gen-3", but no primary source names a model, so that detail does not hold.

Executive producer Nick Bilton, a former tech journalist, framed the demonstration as a way to show the technology up close. "Something I've wanted to do at '60 Minutes' is think about ways we can show and tell stories, and to me this felt like a perfect opportunity to show how far a technology has advanced while also using it in the story," he told Axios.

The show drew its line in the same segment. CBS's behind-the-scenes video says Bilton tells viewers not to expect to see anything else AI-generated on the broadcast, as the programme's own post puts it. A secondary write-up by Pariganaka also describes CBS maintaining a group that can verify whether a photo, an audio clip or a video is AI-generated.

Most of the episode went to the work the demo was showing off. Wertheim's report centred on Mercor, an AI data company that pays freelancers to teach models expertise in fields like finance, architecture and poetry. Mercor's CEO, Brendan Foody, 23, told the programme the firm went from about 20 full-timers in January 2025 to 400, and its annualised revenue rose from $1 million to $2 billion in 24 months, according to Axios.

For anyone who makes video, the useful detail is the input list, not the trick. The show says a past clip and a new script produced a broadcast-shaped presenter in minutes. What it does not say is which Runway model was behind it, and until CBS or Runway names one, the specific tool is an open question.

Watch CBS's behind-the-scenes video below.

Runway's tools are available at runwayml.com, and the behind-the-scenes video is on the 60 Minutes YouTube channel.