London Newspaper Plans to Revive Lifeless Artwork Critic With AI, Lays Off Actual Writers

Brian Sewell, who died in 2015 on the age of 84, was once described as “Britain’s most well-known and controversial artwork critic.” He wasn’t afraid to piss folks off and was regularly referred to by a protracted listing of adjectives that weren’t at all times flattering. For years he wrote for the London’s Night Customary, publishing his incisive and reducing commentary in a weekly column. Now, in a improvement that—have been he alive—it appears secure to imagine he would fully and completely hate, the newspaper has “resurrected” his byline and can resume publishing articles in his title. Sadly, as a substitute of getting an actual human write the articles, they are going to be penned by a man-made intelligence program.

This information comes through a report from Deadline, which quotes two sources with information of the newspaper’s plans. Deadline writes that “AI Sewell has been assigned to assessment The Nationwide Gallery’s new Vincent van Gogh exhibition, titled Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” and that the plans for the chatbot’s deployment “have been mentioned on the highest degree of the Customary and in session with Lord Lebedev, the newspaper’s proprietor.”

Why a publication would do that is unknown and many of the believable explanations are unhealthy. It doesn’t appear out of the realm of the likelihood that the Customary is merely attempting to fire up controversy and outrage to drive reader curiosity. The newspaper hasn’t been doing very nicely these days (it just lately switched from every day to weekly editions and has been laying off a lot of real human writers), so a publicity stunt of some form would make sense.

It’s attainable Customary editors earnestly (albeit inexplicably) assume that readers might be keen on what a chatbot named after a lifeless artwork critic has to say about artwork installations. Perhaps they assume folks will discover it cute. I actually don’t know.

We additionally don’t know the place the Customary plans to get its AI model of Sewell—whether or not it has an in-house crew that may construct the digital “author” or will companion with an AI agency to get the job performed. Gizmodo reached out to the Customary to ask them for particulars and can replace our submit after we obtain a response.

What is evident is that AI, because it stands at present, does a piss-poor job of creating artwork. The notion that it may expertise artwork and consider its high quality for readers is laughable.

In my opinion, media firms who makes offers with AI firms (and there have been fairly a number of these days) are roughly equal to school co-eds who hand out their house addresses to serial killers. After getting royally screwed by the tech trade for the final 20 years (which has sucked up the entire advert income that beforehand fueled journalistic establishments), the answer isn’t to then go and proceed cozying as much as that trade. It might be tough to internalize given all of the noise and hype surrounding this expertise, however the backside line is that this: newspapers ought to be reporting on the AI trade, not partnering with it.