G/O Media Closes Gizmodo En Espabarol, Chooses To Use Artificial Intelligence To Translate Articles

JAKARTA - The owner of Gizmodo, G/O Media, closed and dismissed editors from their Spanish-language website, Gizmodo en Espa happenedol. They now use artificial intelligence (AI) to translate articles.

Matsamas S. Zavia, a writer at Gizmodo en Espamenhol, announced that the publication was closed on August 29 and will now publish an auto-translated article. Gizmodo en Espamenhol previously had a small staff who wrote the original news and created a Spanish-language adaptation of the English-speaking Gizmodo article.

New articles posted on Gizmodo en Espatanhol now have disclaimer at the bottom in Spanish stating that "the content has been translated automatically from the original. Due to the feel of machine translation, there may be a small difference."

The transition to AI translation did not go smoothly. The reader reported on X (formerly called Twitter) that some articles would start in Spanish and suddenly turn into English.

Spanish website AZ Adslzone reports that Gizmodo's team en Espamenhol was notified of this decision via video call. G/O Media did not respond to a request for comment, from The Verge.

News organizations have conducted a genrative AI experiment to help write news or news lists as a way to generate more content without paying more writers.

G/O Media started posting articles written by AI on Gizmodo in July, but these initial iterations contain factual errors. The staff claimed that they were not informed that the stories would be posted until shortly before publication.

Journalists at various G/O Media outlets expressed disagreement with the decision to publish news generated by AI without their knowledge, and their union, the GMG Union, asked readers not to click on the news written by AI.