Executives at G/O Media, which owns Gizmodo, Jezebel, and others, say the company plans to publish more AI-generated stories despite its botched first attempts
VoxPeter Kafka
Context & Ripple Effects
G/O Media is doubling down where it just stumbled: weeks after an error-filled AI-written Star Wars story threw Gizmodo into internal chaos, executives say more AI-generated stories are coming anyway. The company is following a path CNET's owner Red Ventures already walked, having quietly used tools like Wordsmith for over a year amid layoffs and restructuring unease.
The difference is that G/O Media is pressing forward publicly after visible failure, while BuzzFeed's earlier memo framed AI as a quiz-enhancement and personalization layer with humans supplying ideas. That contrast makes this less a technology story than a management bet on volume economics over editorial risk.
First-order effects
Gizmodo and Jezebel staff now face a management team committed to expanding AI output despite documented errors, sharpening the internal conflict the Star Wars incident exposed.
Readers and advertisers encounter a brand knowingly publishing error-prone content, putting Gizmodo's credibility — its core asset as a tech outlet — directly at stake.
Second-order effects
Rival publishers watching the backlash get a live experiment: if G/O Media retains traffic and ad revenue through botched AI stories, the cost case for automation strengthens; if it doesn't, rivals like BuzzFeed can point to the failure to justify their human-in-the-loop framing.
Corrections and retraction work shift onto remaining human editors, raising the real cost per AI story and pressuring publishers to either invest in verification or accept quality erosion.
Third-order effects
If cost-pressured owners keep choosing output volume over accuracy, digital media splits into a verified tier and a cheap synthetic tier, with each public failure like Gizmodo's becoming the case study regulators and unions cite when demanding disclosure standards for machine-written news.
The trend: Cost-pressured digital publishers are normalizing AI-generated content faster than their correction processes or audiences can absorb it, with each high-profile error doing little to slow adoption.
@danilo.redeem-tomorrow.com
@danilo.redeem-tomorrow.com on bluesky
Private equity buying the corpse of Gawker—the most opinionated publisher of its day—and turning it into an AI content mill really captures the sweep of the last technology cycle in one anecdote [embedded post]
@searchliaison
@searchliaison on x
@pkafka FYI about this part: “he's learned that AI content ‘will, at least for the moment, be well-received by search engines’.” This isn't correct. Our systems are looking at the helpfulness of content, rather than how it is produced, as we explained recently: https://developers…
@swodinsky
@swodinsky on x
just constantly in awe at the ways this man makes countless tiny fires and somehow never gets burned himself
@swodinsky
@swodinsky on x
i'm pretty sure g/o's lost all but a handful(?) of its adops ppl at this point—imo what spanfeller's strategy is less driven by “innovation” than “slowly mounting desperation”
@swodinsky
@swodinsky on x
fun fact: at least one of the ex-revenue heads at g/o left the company for a similar role at forbes. from what she told me at the time, they'd recruited her *explicitly* to fix the broken ad and revenue systems span left when he was there
@pkafka
Peter Kafka on x
This refers to G/O exec in my story today noting that an AI-made post earned a search win. You'd have to ask Merrill Brown directly but my understanding of his comment wasn't that Google *favored* AI content. Just that it didn't care if a human or a bot made the content.
@dkthomp
Derek Thompson on x
This reminds me of fun conversations with @ibogost that led to a two-part rule about AI: 1. ChatGPT is “dumber” than most of its boosters claim 2. But so much existing work—in school, academia, the private sector—is similarly “dumb” that it can still be shockingly useful
@genepark
Gene Park on x
this is the hubris and ego and incompetence of media executives on full display. we live in an era where unique personalities and human connection are driving profits and media loyalty, and the C-suite answer to it all is “how about no human connection”
@kylebrussell
Kyle Russell on x
I'm as AI-forward as they come but they've been doing room temperature IQ moves here These tools should be adopted bottom up by people trying to do great work, not imposed by management without editorial direction
@jeffjarvis
@jeffjarvis on x
Trouble ahead.... Coming to your internet, whether you like it or not: More AI-generated stories https://www.vox.com/...
@ryanvailbrown
@ryanvailbrown on x
it's important to understand that the executive leadership at G/O can't see more than a few feet in front of themselves, let alone around corners. https://www.vox.com/... [image]
@dkthomp
Derek Thompson on x
@pkafka @ibogost pretty wild that we're passing out of a generation of journalism where young writers were implicitly told that the first stone on the path to success in journalism was writing articles about what time shows are on TV and whether Star Wars Ep 4 comes before or aft…
New from me: G/O Media caused an uproar when it used bots to write stories for Gizmodo and other sites this month. Now it's going to do it again. “It is absolutely a thing we want to do more of.” https://www.vox.com/...
r/atlanticdiscussions
r on reddit
You're going to see more AI-written articles whether you like it or not
r/ChatGPT
r on reddit
G/O Media's CEO (Onion, AV Club, etc.): it would be “irresponsible” if we didn't produce more AI-written content
r/Journalism
r on reddit
You're going to see more AI-written articles whether you like it or not: Why G/O Media thinks we should have more stories written by bots.