Arstechnica: “AI took my job, literally”—Gizmodo fires Spanish staff amid switch to AI translator::Meanwhile, readers say that some AI-penned articles switch languages halfway through.
Gizmodo is and has been the worst for a long time. In fact, that entire network of sites has been a rats nest of garbage for years. Unsurprising that they’d go this route.
I’ve dropped them from my newsfeed. If they’re just going to be writing AI summaries of what other sites have already published, and getting the facts wrong as a result, you’re literally better off reading nothing rather than read their articles, and trying to read them just encourages them because they’re still getting ad revenue.
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If the quality of what is output by automation is crap, then, yes. And in this case, the quality is crap. Ergo…
I’ve no idea why this thread is so jumbled. Did comments get removed/moved?
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I’m not talking about general LLM and translation. I’m speaking specifically about the garbage Gizmodo is pumping out with AI generated articles lacking factual credibility and translation being of poor quality. It doesn’t mean I’m a Luddite. It means I’m criticizing Gizmodo using poor quality tools to replace human beings who were doing the job well.
I’m bilingual and this absolutely baffles me. AI translation is not at the level of a human translator at all. It’s inept at deducing context or at handling slang, regionalisms, or ambiguity.
I do translations routinely and I tried AI tools. It’s such garbage for anything except basic stuff that I prefer to start from scratch.
It’s good enough to provide pulp for a clickbait headline and sell ads.
Getting AI to do stuff that looks cool is easy. Getting it to do something with high quality without any human in the loop is not.
And companies should honestly just get fucked.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
The original article contains 523 words, the summary contains 129 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Is this irony? I’m never sure
Man, can’t even block the user without blocking all replies too.
