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Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/ai-took-my-job-literally-gizmodo-fires-spanish-staff-amid-switch-to-ai-translator/ [arstechnica.com]

Last week, Gizmodo parent company G/O Media fired the staff of its Spanish-language site Gizmodo en Español and began to replace their work with AI translations of English-language articles, reports [theverge.com] The Verge.

Former Gizmodo writer Matías S. Zavia publicly mentioned the layoffs, which took place via video call [adslzone.net] on August 29, in a social media post. On August 31, Zavia wrote [twitter.com], "Hello friends. On Tuesday they shut down @GizmodoES to turn it into a translation self-publisher (an AI took my job, literally)."

Previously, Gizmodo en Español had a small but dedicated team who wrote original content tailored specifically for Spanish-speaking readers, as well as producing translations of Gizmodo's English articles. The site represented Gizmodo's first foray into international markets when it launched in 2012 after being acquired [businessinsider.com] from Guanabee.

Newly published articles on the site now contain [gizmodo.com] a link to the English version of the article and a disclaimer stating (via our translation from Google Translate), "This content has been automatically translated from the source material. Due to the nuances of machine translation, there may be slight differences. For the original version, click here."

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