Update: LMAO Jesus Christ, Luke Plunkett at Kotaku found a fake Deadspin article. I bet there’s all sorts of fake shit everywhere now. Nice of G/O Media to instantaneously undermine all of their writers like this.
A little over a week after the GMG Union announced G/O Media’s plan to begin testing AI-generated content its websites, the “future” has arrived… and it’s not looking great for ol’ Jim “Never Beating the Herb Allegations” Spanfeller.
The post, “A Chronological List of Star Wars Movies & TV Shows,” appeared on Gizmodo under the author credit “Gizmodo Bot” today a bit after 5 o’clock, Eastern time. This piece of content, which I hesitate to call an article, does not seem to have breached containment outside of Gizmodo or io9.
At first glance, the article appears to be an in-universe “chronological” list of Star Wars media. It starts with the prequel trilogy, then moves to Solo, Rogue One and the original trilogy, followed by The Mandalorian and the sequel trilogy. Okay, easy enough. Then it bafflingly lists Star Wars: The Clone Wars after The Rise of Skywalker and ends with Rebels. If you’re wondering, no – none of the other more recent Disney+ original shows made it onto the list.
In terms of completeness or even cohesion, then, we’ve already got a piece that needs some rewrites. But wait! What about the content in the list? What about the words used to describe each entry? Well, lmao, let’s talk about that. Here’s the listing for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope:
Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) The first installment of the original trilogy, A New Hope follows Luke Skywalker as he embarks on a journey to save the galaxy from the Empire.
I mean, it isn’t wrong, but this is barely a Wikipedia description. Oh, lmao, I have a better one:
The Mandalorian (2019) Set in the aftermath of the Galactic Empire’s fall, the series follows the adventures of a bounty hunter known as the Mandalorian as he navigates the outer reaches of the galaxy, protecting a mysterious child known as “The Child” or “Baby Yoda”.
Hahahaha, man, imagine if Werner Herzog had told John Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal), “I want to see Baby Yoda.” Incredible, I love this movie. So anyway, do we see what’s wrong here? It’s still not “wrong” in the very broadest strokes, but it’s clearly just relying on what the Internet called Grogu when The Mandalorian first came out to describe it. More rewrites would be necessary on that fact alone, and I mean, can we not punch these descriptions up in any way? Man, if only we had someone around who had a good grasp of language and liked to describe things like Star Wars with the written word.
Here’s GMG Union’s statement from last week:
On June 29, G/O Media informed editorial staff that it will begin a “modest test” of artificial intelligence (AI) content on its websites—The A.V. Club, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Quartz, The Root, and The Takeout.
As the unionized editorial staffers of G/O Media, organized with the Writers Guild of America East, we are appalled by this news. The hard work of journalists cannot be replaced by unreliable Al programs notorious for creating falsehoods and plagiarizing the work of real writers. Our newsrooms have spent decades building trust with audiences—introducing computer-generated garbage undermines our ability to do our jobs, erodes trust in us as journalists, damages our brands, and threatens our jobs.
This news comes after years of disinvestment in our newsrooms, increased demands on reporters and editors, and mass attrition of staff. Furthermore, it comes mere days after the company laid off more than a dozen of our colleagues, including union employees.
In a memo, management said, “These features aren’t replacing work currently being done by writers and editors.” But they have given us no reason over the years to believe this statement.
There’s only one mode at G/O Media: spend less and extract more, regardless of how it affects quality. We strongly urge G/O Media to cease its plans to litter our websites with Al-generated content and invest in real journalism done by real journalists.
Honestly, our heart goes out to the actual fucking writers at Gizmodo, io9 and all the other G/O Media sites who are sitting in disbelief as Spanfeller takes one more big public shit on the brand they’ve been working so hard to maintain.
Additionally, here’s a statement from James Whitbrook, io9’s Deputy Editor:
For 15 years, io9 has grown an audience that demands quality coverage of genre entertainment, from critical analysis, to insightful explainers, to accurate news and industry-shaping investigative reporting. These readers have grown io9 into one of the best performing desks at Gizmodo, G/O Media’s flagship site in terms of traffic, and they have done so by rigorously holding this team and the colleagues that came before us to a standard of expertise and accuracy that we have been proud to achieve. The article published on io9 today rejects the very standards this team holds itself to on a daily basis as critics and as reporters. It is shoddily written, it is riddled with basic errors; in closing the comments section off, it denies our readers, the lifeblood of this network, the chance to publicly hold us accountable, and to call this work exactly what it is: embarrassing, unpublishable, disrespectful of both the audience and the people who work here, and a blow to our authority and integrity. It is shameful that this work has been put to our audience and to our peers in the industry as a window to G/O’s future, and it is shameful that we as a team have had to spend an egregious amount of time away from our actual work to make it clear to you the unacceptable errors made in publishing this piece.
We can’t ignore the fact that the only people trying to push AI on media and culture right now are the same people who believed with all their hearts that pivot-to-video was the future and that the metaverse wasn’t wholly fucking embarrassing to even look at. These idiots are destroying everything in their gaze, and they won’t stop until every website is pumping out sludge for us to consume. Fuck that future, and fuck these assholes. But hey, don’t be too upset – there’s something direct you can do about it in this case! From GMG Union:
This AI effort has been pushed by G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller, Editorial Director Merrill Brown, and Deputy Editorial Director Lea Goldman. Let them know how you feel! [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
I’m sure they’d love to hear from you. 🙂
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