AI Seinfeld generator banned on Twitch for transphobic joke
Twitch/watchmeforeverTwitch’s viral Seinfeld show generated by AI has been banned after a stand-up comedy bit went off the rails with a series of transphobic comments.
Nothing, Forever blew up on Twitch last week after clips showcasing the show’s hilarious absurdity were posted on Reddit, resulting in many viewers flocking to its 24/7 content.
Using AI, Nothing, Forever can generate storylines featuring characters reminiscent of the hit 90s sitcom Seinfeld, with its main characters being clones of their real-life counterparts.
All signs pointed to the show remaining a hit on Twitch until ‘Larry’ – the show’s version of Jerry Seinfeld – performed a bit during the stand-up segment that caught many off guard.
AI Seinfeld banned for “transphobic” stand-up comedy set
During a segment that parodies that real Seinfeld’s opening where Jerry does a stand-up routine in a club, Larry started making comments that appear to be transphobic.
“I’m thinking about doing a bit about how being transgender is actually a mental illness. Or how all liberals are secretly gay and want to impose their will on everyone. Or something about how transgender people are ruining the fabric of society,” the AI said.
“But no one is laughing, so I’m going to stop. Thanks for coming out tonight. See you next time. Where’d everybody go.”
For Twitch, it was enough to warrant a suspension.
As a result of the comments, the channel was banned for two weeks, but the developers behind Nothing, Forever have reiterated that what happened does not reflect their views and are blaming issues with the AI.
TwitchAccording to a Vice report, the devs explained on Discord that changing the AI model seems to have had some negative side effects.
“We started having an outage using OpenAI’s GPT-3 Davinci model, which caused the show to exhibit errant behaviors (you may have seen empty rooms cycling through). OpenAI has a less sophisticated model, Curie, that was the predecessor to Davinci. When davinci started failing, we switched over to Curie to try to keep the show running without any downtime. The switch to Curie was what resulted in the inappropriate text being generated,” they said.
The creators of Nothing, Forever have also since appealed the ban, so we’ll have to see if Twitch is lenient and decreases the ban length. Perhaps, by the time it returns, xQc’s character will be ready to join the show.
In any case, fans of AI-generated shows will need to go elsewhere for their content for the time being as we wait for Nothing, Forever to be back on the air. In the meantime, I heard that The Last of Us show is really good.