South Park has never been afraid to make fun of everything and anything, including itself and most especially, pop culture. If it’s popular and the talk of mainstream media, you’d best bet that Matt Stone and Trey Parker will take a swing at it. The showrunners have a creative knack for satire and this was on full display in a recent episode.
Now on its 26th season (yes, audiences have watched and enjoyed South Park for a very long time), “Deep Learning”, put the spotlight on a very controversial topic, AI tools.
As if that wasn’t enough, Parker asked ChatGPT to help him out, and fans absolutely loved it.
Deep Learning revolves around Stan discovering OpenAI after Clyde tells him that there’s stuff on the internet that you can use “to do all of your writing for you,” including “dealing with chicks.” As any 10-year-old boy with a girlfriend would, Stan checked it out.
Soon enough, Wendy starts opening up to Stan. But, just like the proverbial pandora’s box, you can’t put something back inside once you’ve let it out into the world. In this case, Stan, alongside Cartman, Butters, and Clyde, uses ChatGPT to write school essays. It didn’t take long for the school to find out about this and, for some reason, a technician with a falcon comes to South Park Elementary to find the culprits.
It’s a hilarity-filled episode that actually makes a ton of points about the dangers of AI tools. Stan even talked about this in his episode-ending speech, pointing out the negative side of using AI, especially when large corporations are involved.
Ironically, we recently reported about Ubisoft using AI (actually, it’s more akin to machine learning) to write scripts for future games.
In other news, THQ Nordic is currently working on an unnamed South Park game. It isn’t clear if this is the same South Park game confirmed in 2021.
