4 ms·

Gizmodo’s owner shuts down Spanish language site in favor of AI translations

9 points by gslin 3y ago

oligendebien 3y ago
I mean, it can be read but my brain hurts when I read it. I guess they don’t care much about the Spanish speaking readers
rvz 3y ago
"AI can't replace human translators" Seems like G/O Media thinks so. Good enough for them that Gizmodo Spanish translators were replaced and offshored by LLMs and the human cost is sent straight to $0. Even if the LLM doesn't understand its own mistakes as long as at least one translator can see that. Only a matter of time until lots of journalists everywhere will be impacted and significantly. The future is less of them and most will be offshored by LLMs in this case. Learn to c̶o̶d̶e̶ adapt.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  > Only a matter of time until lots of journalists everywhere will be impacted and significantly. Modern Google Search, the adtech arms race and social media were butchering professional journalists before the rise of LLMs. My old employer ran a respected, hard hitting PC hardware site. And after a point, they had two choices: shutter the site and pursue another job, or turn the site into a clickbait spam farm. Unlike most, he choose to go out with dignity... And this was years ago. Other outlets I frequented have mostly devolved to rambling spam farms. A few have fused into larger conglomerates and preserved some of their original character between the SEO deal and guide posts. LLMs are certainly accelerating that, but the bulk of browser journalism was kinda doomed anyway.
  - MattGaiser 3y ago
    The big challenge with any kind of written media is that it is paid by the view. So 5 minute clickbait was an article that took a week pay the same. You also have the problem of many people being happy to do the work for near nothing for clout.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  Using a traffic estimator I'm seeing less than 1M pageviews a month for Gizmodo en Espanol. I don't think this means too much. Almost all their traffic is for their English site. I also dont think the skillset of translators and journalists are that similar. Its probably not the best time to be in ad-supported content now (for this and other reasons) but dont really see how "Site automatically translates original journalism done in English into Spanish" is necessarily bad for the journalists who now will get their work seen by more people.

9 points by gslin 3y ago

I mean, it can be read but my brain hurts when I read it. I guess they don’t care much about the Spanish speaking readers

rvz 3y ago

"AI can't replace human translators" Seems like G/O Media thinks so. Good enough for them that Gizmodo Spanish translators were replaced and offshored by LLMs and the human cost is sent straight to $0. Even if the LLM doesn't understand its own mistakes as long as at least one translator can see that. Only a matter of time until lots of journalists everywhere will be impacted and significantly. The future is less of them and most will be offshored by LLMs in this case. Learn to c̶o̶d̶e̶ adapt.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
> Only a matter of time until lots of journalists everywhere will be impacted and significantly. Modern Google Search, the adtech arms race and social media were butchering professional journalists before the rise of LLMs. My old employer ran a respected, hard hitting PC hardware site. And after a point, they had two choices: shutter the site and pursue another job, or turn the site into a clickbait spam farm. Unlike most, he choose to go out with dignity... And this was years ago. Other outlets I frequented have mostly devolved to rambling spam farms. A few have fused into larger conglomerates and preserved some of their original character between the SEO deal and guide posts. LLMs are certainly accelerating that, but the bulk of browser journalism was kinda doomed anyway.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  The big challenge with any kind of written media is that it is paid by the view. So 5 minute clickbait was an article that took a week pay the same. You also have the problem of many people being happy to do the work for near nothing for clout.
fasthands9 3y ago
Using a traffic estimator I'm seeing less than 1M pageviews a month for Gizmodo en Espanol. I don't think this means too much. Almost all their traffic is for their English site. I also dont think the skillset of translators and journalists are that similar. Its probably not the best time to be in ad-supported content now (for this and other reasons) but dont really see how "Site automatically translates original journalism done in English into Spanish" is necessarily bad for the journalists who now will get their work seen by more people.