AI News Anchors Fired After Failed Experiment at Hawaiian Newspaper

Newspaper Fires Two AI Reporters After Bizarre Behavior

Hawaiian local broadcaster and newspaper The Garden Island has fired the two AI bots it recently introduced as its new anchors. As Wired journalist Guthrie Scrimegour -- who was also previously let go by the paper -- reports, the bots known as James and Rose were let go just two months after making their debut. At the time, the newspaper made a big fuss about becoming the first paper in the country to adopt AI-powered news anchors. James and Rose were the product of an Israeli AI company called Caledo, and quickly made waves for their bizarre and unnervingly monotonous line deliveries (as Scrimegour points out, for instance, James used the exact same matter-of-fact tone for a story about a vigil for a labor massacre and a fall pumpkin giveaway.) The pair also frequently butchered Hawaiian names, according to Scrimegour, and messed up the pronunciation of basic words like "rifle." That's not to mention frequently glitching hands and a terrifying inability to blink. That kind of uncanniness didn't sit well with the Garden Island's audience, many of whom called out the newspaper for replacing human labor with AI. Almost every video the newspaper uploaded to Instagram that depicts James and Rose was immediately panned in the comments. Meanwhile, the bots' creator Caledo declared the experiment a success in a statement to Wired, and vowed to expand the tech to other newspapers across the United States. "I never like to root against fellow reporters, but I'll admit I was also happy to see them go," Scrimegour wrote. "While James and Rose did not actively supplant any existing newsroom jobs, I was concerned that the effort diverted resources that could be used on traditional media expenses, like human reporters, photographers, and editors." Unsurprisingly, the "severely under-resourced" local paper was bought out by a media conglomerate earlier this year. Whether James and Rose even managed to save the company money remains unclear. As Scrimegour points out, the newspaper's parent company appears to have not been able to "sell a single ad on the videos." "I wish James and Rose the best of luck in their future endeavors -- it's a tough job market out there," he wrote.

The AI Reporter That Took My Old Job Just Got Fired

A local newspaper in Hawaii experimented with AI-generated presenters to engage and boost its readership. After two months, the bots have been shelved. James and Rose, the bizarre AI bots who were recently installed as news broadcasters at local Hawaii paper The Garden Island, have been terminated. Employee retention is always a bit of a problem at local newspapers, and The Garden Island newspaper on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is no exception. Many reporters -- usually mainland transplants like myself -- would stick around for just a couple years before moving on, and some only lasted months. After a two-month run, James and Rose have joined our ranks, as their broadcast has been discontinued, according to a representative for The Garden Island's parent company, Oahu Publications (OPI). The pair were designed by Caledo, an Israeli firm that turns articles into videos where AI hosts discuss the news with one another. The Garden Island's program was the first of its kind in the United States, and Caledo said at the time that it intended to expand it to hundreds of other local newspapers throughout the country -- this is still the aim, according to a spokesperson. While OPI declined to comment further, and Caledo declared the program a success without elaborating on this particular scenario, it seems likely that a broadly negative public response played into the decision to end James and Rose's tenure at The Garden Island. James, a middle-aged Asian man, and Rose, a younger redhead, were never able to figure out how to present the news in a manner that wasn't deeply off-putting for viewers. Their program, which ran twice a week on Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram, covered topics as varied as a fall pumpkin giveaway and a vigil for a labor massacre -- all in the same distant, matter-of-fact tone of beings incapable of comprehending human emotions. In one particularly stilted exchange about the pumpkin giveaway, Rose asked James, "And how have these free pumpkins impacted the community?" to which James responded, "The free pumpkins have brought joy to many." They consistently butchered difficult Hawaiian names and even had surprising struggles with much simpler words. In their final broadcast on November 4, while discussing an air rifle championship, Rose inexplicably replaced the word "rifle" with the word "referee." In the polarized months leading up to the election, the pair managed to inspire visceral, bipartisan contempt. Comments under the videos were nearly universally negative.