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-days-a-week show, had become a sensation on Twitch, racking up thousands of viewers. The show featured crudely drawn recreations of characters from the comedy sitcom "Seinfeld" that played out scripts created by using OpenAI software. OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company, has become wildly popular in recent months for its chatbot ChatGPT, which generates conversational text.
The Twitch stream follows the fictional “Larry Feinberg," a play off 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 has characters that parallel the show's other famous protagonists, including "Yvonne Torres" (Elaine), "Fred Kastopolous" (George) and "Zoltan Kakler" (Kramer), who sit around "Larry's" apartment making AI-generated jokes. Just like real “Seinfeld” episodes, “Nothing, Forever” begins with a cold open of “Larry” doing stand-up comedy before the show progresses into his apartment.
Prior to being removed from the platform, the Twitch show appeared pixelated and low-quality — imagine a low-resolution Jerry Seinfeld doing stand-up in front of a brick wall — that evoked a nostalgia for the early days of the internet.
On Sunday night, "Larry" began his stand-up set by making transphobic remarks. He noted that his crowd wasn't laughing and asked for suggestions for the routine.
"I’m thinking about doing a bit about how being transgender is actually a mental illness," he said in the stand-up remarks. "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 is laughing, so I’m going to stop. Thanks for coming out tonight. See you next time. Where’d everybody go?"
As of Monday afternoon, the Twitch page of "Nothing, Forever" showed visitors a message: "This channel is temporarily unavailable due to a violation of Twitch’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service."
Twitch’s community guidelines state the platform “does not permit behavior that is motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance,” which includes “sex, 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 did not immediately return a request for comment.
VICE reported that the team behind "Nothing, Forever" was forced to switch to an older OpenAI chat-generating bot after the current version the show typically runs on failed.
A show staff member posted on Discord that the show was forced to switch from "GPT-3 Davinci" to "GPT-3 Curie," which led to the transphobic remarks, according to VICE.
OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment about the older version of GPT-3 being the cause of the remarks.
