The brand new series of South Park has already ruffled the feathers of several contemporary celebrities, taking aim at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in episode two named The Worldwide Privacy Tour. After taking a break from contemporary satire in the third episode, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone take on the hot-button issue of AI chatbots in the fourth instalment, Deep Learning.
Set in South Park Elementary, this episode centres on the boys of Stan’s class who have all started to use Chat GPT, a real-life chatbot developed by OpenAI, to write their essays for them and reply to their girlfriend’s heartfelt text messages. Things start to complicate when the school begins to suspect the use of the programme and brings in a bizarre AI detector to help sniff out the culprits.
