Spanish Gizmodo no longer human: “AI took my job, literally”

Updated on: 05 September 2023

Ernestas Naprys
Senior Journalist

The company behind the popular tech news website Gizmodo, G/O Media, closed its technology blog in Spanish and laid off all the employees via a video call, as reported by adslzone.net. The website continues to operate using automated AI translations.

Former employees at Gizmodo en Español started posting their farewells on X, as automated translations replaced their jobs.

“Hello, friends. On Tuesday, they shut down Gizmodo en Español to turn it into a self-publishing platform for translations (an AI took my job, literally),” former writer, Matías S. Zavia, announced on X.

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According to him, the publication was closed on Tuesday, 29th August. The termination may be due to a drop in advertising revenues, as speculated by adslzone.net.

The news on the Spanish Gizmodo website is still being published with a disclaimer that “This content has been automatically translated from the source material. Due to the nuances of machine translation, there may be slight differences.”

The experience is not polished, as the readers noticed some articles suddenly changing from Spanish to English.

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Generative AI is seen both as a threat and an experiment by publishers. Some embrace the use of AI in generating stories. The Irish Times had to apologize for publishing an AI-generated opinion piece criticizing fake tans. Major news publishers joined a coalition to sue AI companies for using their original content to train generative AI models.

According to The Washington Post, Gizmodo began experimenting with AI-generated stories in July. Staff harshly criticized the practice, saying that an error-riddled story about Star Wars was “actively hurting our reputations and credibility” and showed “zero respect” for journalists. Cybernews reached out to G/O Media but has yet to receive a response.