Wow, dumb move. If they’re really willing to automate this shit with no regard for quality, they should have started running all their articles through Google Translate ages ago.
The Onion and GMG Unions are saddened to report that our colleagues at Gizmodo Español, a site that once housed original, quality Spanish-language reporting, have been replaced en masse by an AI translation service. Instead of relying on the talented journalists at Gizmodo Español, G/O Media has enacted an automation that takes English-language Gizmodo articles, translates them poorly into Spanish, and posts them on Gizmodo Español almost immediately, with no Spanish-language editing. We offer our deepest sympathies to the Gizmodo Español team and share in their frustration as jobs for working journalists continue to disappear worldwide. The Gizmodo Español team comprised of four full-time employees—one editor and three writers—who have been employed by G/O media for over a combined 25 years. Because of the nature of their yearly contracts, they will not receive adequate severance.
They were employed at half the rate of American staff writers due to the nature of these contracts, and were rarely offered raises. Unfortunately this move to eliminate the Español team represents yet another broken promise from G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller and Editorial Director Merrill Brown, who have repeatedly said that the company’s AI experiments were intended to supplement human writing, not replace it. This week, a team of four has been [replaced] by an undisclosed automated machine translation service. Adding insult to injury, when the Gizmodo staff objected to having their bylines attached to machine translations, G/O management removed all bylines from Gizmodo Español—even the bylines of the four journalists who were laid off by G/O Media this week. We remain stringently opposed to G/O Media’s use of AI-generated content and pledge to continue fighting on behalf of journalists and the indispensable public service they provide.
As always, we appreciate your support — and your continual support of real journalism.
Funfact, the shitpapers of Axel Springer plan to use fully fletched AI generated articles since ChatGPT came out, in that case I can’t see any way to decrease the quality further tho!
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Former Gizmodo writer Matías S. Zavia publicly mentioned the layoffs, which took place via video call on August 29, in a social media post.
Earlier this summer, Gizmodo began publishing AI-generated articles in English without informing or involving its editorial staff.
The stories were found to contain multiple factual inaccuracies, leading the Gizmodo union to criticize the practice as unethical.
For Spanish-speaking audiences seeking news about science, technology, and Internet culture, the loss of original reporting from Gizmodo en Español is potentially a major blow.
Subtle errors, mistranslations, and lack of cultural knowledge can impair the quality of automatically translated content.
But with so many media companies chasing revenue through SEO manipulations and AI-written filler, it’s unlikely that we’ll see the end of this apparently cost-cutting AI trend soon.
So they not only fired the translator, they also don’t check if it at least looks correct. This says a lot more about Gizmodo than just firing the translator.
A lot of folks are finding out that their bosses never REALLY cared that their job was done well, or even competently.
If the company can save money with an AI that gets a bunch of stuff wrong, that’s “good enough”.
They’ve just made the Spanish articles read like trash a.i. generated spam advertisements. I imagine their traffic from Spanish speaking countries will drop to nothing.
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Wow, dumb move. If they’re really willing to automate this shit with no regard for quality, they should have started running all their articles through Google Translate ages ago.
What are with these stupid images articles use? What, a robot hand turning from English to Spanish?
Why, those are “AI” generated too, of course!
Factory workers in the US: First time?
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Don’t worry, if it translates anything wrong the Gizmodo editors will just insult anyone in the comments who points it out.
joint statement by GMG Union and Onion Union:
The US has the worst labor market regulation of any Western country. Extremely pathetic.
Well this should go bueno.
Funfact, the shitpapers of Axel Springer plan to use fully fletched AI generated articles since ChatGPT came out, in that case I can’t see any way to decrease the quality further tho!
Huh? Pretty sure it will make the site unreadable very soon…
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🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Former Gizmodo writer Matías S. Zavia publicly mentioned the layoffs, which took place via video call on August 29, in a social media post.
Earlier this summer, Gizmodo began publishing AI-generated articles in English without informing or involving its editorial staff.
The stories were found to contain multiple factual inaccuracies, leading the Gizmodo union to criticize the practice as unethical.
For Spanish-speaking audiences seeking news about science, technology, and Internet culture, the loss of original reporting from Gizmodo en Español is potentially a major blow.
Subtle errors, mistranslations, and lack of cultural knowledge can impair the quality of automatically translated content.
But with so many media companies chasing revenue through SEO manipulations and AI-written filler, it’s unlikely that we’ll see the end of this apparently cost-cutting AI trend soon.
Saved 75% of original text.
So they not only fired the translator, they also don’t check if it at least looks correct. This says a lot more about Gizmodo than just firing the translator.
A lot of folks are finding out that their bosses never REALLY cared that their job was done well, or even competently. If the company can save money with an AI that gets a bunch of stuff wrong, that’s “good enough”.
A german Youtuber made a great video about that titles “not AI will replace you, your boss will”
Spot on.
This says absolutely nothing new about Gizmodo they haven’t already telegraphed loudly to the world.
Shows how much multinational media companies care about their non-english audience.
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They’ve just made the Spanish articles read like trash a.i. generated spam advertisements. I imagine their traffic from Spanish speaking countries will drop to nothing.
I see you’re an optimist.