London Newspaper Plans to Revive Dead Art Critic With AI, Lays Off Real Writers

Brian Sewell, who died in 2015 at the age of 84, was once described as “Britain’s most famous and controversial art critic.” He wasn’t afraid to piss people off and was frequently referred to by a long list of adjectives that weren’t always flattering. For years he wrote for the London’s Evening Standard, publishing his incisive and cutting commentary in a weekly column. Now, in a development that—were he alive—it seems safe to assume he would completely and utterly hate, the newspaper has “resurrected” his byline and will resume publishing articles in his name. Unfortunately, instead of having a real human write the articles, they will be penned by an artificial intelligence program.

This news comes via a report from Deadline, which quotes two sources with knowledge of the newspaper’s plans. Deadline writes that “AI Sewell has been assigned to review The National Gallery’s new Vincent van Gogh exhibition, titled Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” and that the plans for the chatbot’s deployment “were discussed at the highest level of the Standard and in consultation with Lord Lebedev, the newspaper’s proprietor.”

Why a publication would do this is unknown and most of the plausible explanations are bad. It doesn’t seem out of the realm of the possibility that the Standard is merely trying to stir up controversy and outrage to drive reader interest. The newspaper hasn’t been doing very well lately (it recently switched from daily to weekly editions and has been laying off a lot of real human writers), so a publicity stunt of some kind would make sense.

It’s possible Standard editors earnestly (albeit inexplicably) think that readers will be interested in what a chatbot named after a dead art critic has to say about art installations. Maybe they think people will find it cute. I really have no idea.

We also don’t know where the Standard plans to get its AI version of Sewell—whether it has an in-house team that will build the virtual “writer” or will partner with an AI firm to get the job done. Gizmodo reached out to the Standard to ask them for details and will update our post when we receive a response.

What is clear is that AI, as it stands today, does a piss-poor job of making art. The notion that it could experience art and evaluate its quality for readers is laughable.

In my view, media companies who makes deals with AI companies (and there have been quite a few lately) are roughly equivalent to college co-eds who hand out their home addresses to serial killers. After getting royally screwed by the tech industry for the last two decades (which has sucked up all of the ad revenue that previously fueled journalistic institutions), the solution isn’t to then go and continue cozying up to that industry. It may be difficult to internalize given all the noise and hype surrounding this technology, but the bottom line is this: newspapers should be reporting on the AI industry, not partnering with it.