Nothing, Forever an AI-generated Seinfeld show that broadcasts on Twitch, was recently banned temporarily from the platform following the accidental broadcast of transphobic content. The show is a pixel-animated version of the classic nineties sitcom that's written entirely by a computer. The channel it broadcasts from, watchmeforever, has about 190,000 followers and broadcasted nearly every day until February 4th when the incident occurred. The popular AI used to generate the dialogue, ChatGPT, trains from content all over the internet and seemingly called out trans people during the segment of Nothing, Forever where Larry does stand up at the Laugh Factory just like Jerry Seinfeld would at the end of Seinfeld.
Nothing, Forever was created by Skyler Harte and Brian Habersberger and was initially released on December 14, 2022. The two met via Team Fortress 2 before Harte would have the idea for the show in 2019. Nothing, Forever is an homage to Seinfeld, with the main characters named Larry, Yvonne, Fred, and Zoltan instead of Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer. The writing manages to capture the tone of its inspiration well, as the awkward pacing of AI-generated speech matches the awkward and dry humor of Seinfeld. But when a computer is left alone to generate content, it can't be aware of what's appropriate to say.
Twitch banned the Seinfeld spoof Nothing, Forever for 14 days over the jokes made by Larry at the expense of trans people, blaming them, liberals, and people with mental illness for ruining society. The incident occurred after errors where characters didn't appear in the hour leading up to Larry's stand-up prompted the watchmeforever team to switch its content filter model from Davinci, ChatGPT's more capable filter, to Curie, a filter that emphasizes speed. When the show came back on, the chat had "nonsense mode" enabled, where characters don't use context or respond intelligibly, but spew random words and generally behave chaotically, and that's when Larry popped off with his tirade.
The creators of Nothing, Forever assured everyone that none of what Larry said reflects any of the opinions of those working on the show. The hurtful remarks were broadcast as a result of the switch to the less sophisticated content filter, which they made in an attempt to keep the show running without any downtime. This is the first instance the team has encountered when the AI-generated content was truly inappropriate, and it said that it was embarrassed by the mistake which led to the technical error.
The Nothing, Forever team has appealed the ban and said that regardless of the result, the show will eventually return and that it will use the downtime to work on improving the AI and ensuring nothing like this ever happens again.
Source: The Verge