Kmflett's Blog

The Traitors, AI & the ‘Secret Traitor’’ A 2026 deskilling exercise

After the ratings success of Celebrity Traitors last autumn, a new series of non-celeb Traitors started on January 1^st.

The 22 players seem to include quite a number who wherever they may have originated from are based in London. As a born and bred North Londoner I think that’s a good thing. A note of caution. When the Independent Labour Party first had a go at sorting out a leadership in 1892 it picked people representative of the various areas of the UK with the proviso that they all lived in London. Unsurprisingly this did not go down well with people who did not live in London.

The latest series has a twist explained by The Guardian here

on top of the traitors selected by Winkleman at the first round table, there’s now a “Secret Traitor” who knows their identities, nominates who they may kill and is the only player to have total oversight of the game. Not even those watching at home know who, among the supposed faithfuls, is beneath that scarlet cloak.

The point seems to have been missed, and it is 2026, that the Secret Traitor is not a person but an AI tool, sifting the words and the actions of the contestants to see which deserve to go on the purge list.

The role of the three 2026 Traitors has been deskilled, as arguably has the job of the Faithfuls, since they are also being assessed by the AI tool