G/O Media, owner of popular tech site Gizmodo began publishing AI-generated articles last week, along with a slew of other outlets, despite strong objections from many of its employees, according to The Washington Post. The articles are all attributed to different bots — Gizmodo Bot, for example – with no other indication that the article was created using an AI chatbot. Unsurprisingly, the stories required a lot of work.
The internal response to Gizmodo‘s first chatbot-created story — a chronological list by Star Wars movies that weren’t chronological – weren’t exactly thrilled, with journalists reportedly writing in Slack that it was “actively damaging our reputation and credibility”.
Brown told staff in a email at the end of June, G/O Media’s collection of tech channels meant it was important it used AI in its reporting, saying there would be errors, but they would be fixed immediately. In a party game from Thursday that The Washington Post Brown told the team in Slack that he was “eager to thoughtfully collect and act on feedback,” and said better things “will emerge as we grapple with the best ways to use the technology.”
Again, staff journalists expressed dismay, with one calling AI “a solution in search of a problem” and accusing Brown of “wasting everyone’s time.” Another pointed out that there was nothing in their job descriptions about “editing or reviewing AI-generated content”.
Gizmodo Deputy editor James Whitbrook told the After in an interview he had never dealt with “this basic level of incompetence with any of the colleagues I’ve ever worked with,” adding that the chatbot’s apparent inability to even Star Wars movies in the right order meant it wasn’t reliable to report anything accurately. Whitbrook said he had neither requested nor seen the article before it was published.
The After reports that the articles were written using both Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
G/O Media is just one of many media companies that have experimented with AI-generated content in recent months. CNET has recently begun reviewing its approach to AI after heavy media criticism over its use of the technology Insider started his own experiment with ChatGPT in April.
GMG Union, which represents Gizmodo’s writers and is part of the Writers Guild of America, East, readers asked not clicking on AI-written articlessaying the articles are “unethical and unacceptable”.
We have reached out to G/O Media for comment.
Disclosure: Vox Media’s editorial team, including The Verge, is also affiliated with the Writers Guild of America, East.
