The brand new ‘South Park’ episode was partly written by AI
The brand new series of South Park has already ruffled the feathers of several contemporary celebrities, taking aim at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in episode two named The Worldwide Privacy Tour. After taking a break from contemporary satire in the third episode, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone take on the hot-button issue of AI chatbots in the fourth instalment, Deep Learning.
Set in South Park Elementary, this episode centres on the boys of Stan’s class who have all started to use Chat GPT, a real-life chatbot developed by OpenAI, to write their essays for them and reply to their girlfriend’s heartfelt text messages. Things start to complicate when the school begins to suspect the use of the programme and brings in a bizarre AI detector to help sniff out the culprits.
This all leads to a curious final sequence in which Stan saves the day by using Chat GPT to come up with a way to get out of trouble, a conclusion that itself was written by AI as stated in the final credits. Stuffed with predictable catchphrases and a cliched ‘happy ending’, the AI-generated ending accentuates the predictability of such long-running comedies, with Parker and Stone cleverly parodying their own writing.
Highlighting that many of these AI programmes are owned by a load of giant Big Tech companies, Stan’s final speech (itself a trope of the show) argued for open source availability of such AI programming, blaming the corporations for hoarding information rather than demonising the technology itself.
The experimental finale adds to Parker and Stone’s recent rejuvenation of the South Park formula, creating two-part specials, hour-long episodes and serialised seasons of the show that follow one singular overarching story. Parker and Stone’s latest AI-written episode may also indicate that they intend to explore big tech even more in the future; they did secure a $20 million investment in their AI studio Deep Voodoo in December 2022, after all.
Season 26 of South Park is available now on Comedy Central, take a look at the clip partly written by AI from episode four, Deep Learning, below.
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