A viral Twitch stream that produced an endless AI-generated “Seinfeld” parody show has been banned from the platform for violating community guidelines.
“Nothing, Forever,” a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week show, had become a sensation on Twitch, drawing thousands of viewers. The show featured crudely drawn recreations of characters from the comedy sitcom “Seinfeld” playing scripts created using OpenAI software. OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company, has exploded in popularity in recent months for its chatbot ChatGPT, which generates conversational text.
The Twitch stream follows the fictional “Larry Feinberg,” a playoff of the titular character from “Seinfeld,” which aired on NBC for nine seasons from 1989-1998 (NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC News). The stream also features characters that parallel the show’s other famous protagonists, including “Yvonne Torres” (Elaine), “Fred Kastopolous” (George), and “Zoltan Kakler” (Kramer), who live around the apartment of “Larry” sit and make AI-generated jokes. Like real “Seinfeld” episodes, “Nothing, Forever” opens with a cold opening of “Larry” doing stand-up comedy before the show moves into his apartment.
Before the Twitch show was removed from the platform, it appeared grainy and low-quality — picture a low-res Jerry Seinfeld doing stand-up in front of a brick wall — evoking nostalgia for the early days of the Internet.
On Sunday night, “Larry” kicked off his stand-up set with transphobic remarks. Noting that his audience wasn’t laughing, he asked for routine suggestions.
“I’m thinking about doing something about how being transgender is actually a mental illness,” he said in the standing comments. “Or how all liberals are secretly gay and want to impose their will on everyone. Or something about how transgender people are ruining the fabric of society. But no one’s laughing, so I’ll stop. Thanks for coming out tonight. Until next time “Where’s everyone gone?”
As of Monday afternoon, the “Nothing, Forever” Twitch page showed visitors a message: “This channel is temporarily unavailable due to a violation of Twitch’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service.”
Twitch’s Guidance for the community stating that the platform “does not allow behavior motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance”, including “gender, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation” among other forms of discrimination.
A spokesperson for Twitch did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the suspension.
“Nothing, Forever” also didn’t immediately return with a request for comment.
SHAME reported that the team behind “Nothing, Forever” was forced to switch to an older OpenAI chat-generating bot after the current version the show normally runs on failed.
A show worker posted on Discord that the show was forced to switch from “GPT-3 Davinci” to “GPT-3 Curie,” which VICE says led to the transphobic comments.
OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment about the older version of GPT-3 as the cause of the comments.