Bill Simmons reportedly ended ChatGPT partnership after online uproar - Awful Announcing

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The Ringer's Bill Simmons ended the company's sponsorship deal with ChatGPT after audience backlash earlier this year.

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Less AI and more AA in your search results.

Bill Simmons has acknowledged that fans of The Ringer “just didn’t like” the ChatGPT-sponsored segments that cropped up across the company’s podcast network earlier this year.

The partnership between the OpenAI-owned chatbot service and Simmons’ company became national news after segments built around ChatGPT prompts proliferated across multiple Ringer shows. Simmons also used the service to recreate Roger Ebert-style reviews of films which the late movie critic was not alive to cover, on his movie podcast, The Rewatchables. The Ringer’s senior talk strategist (and former head of content), Sean Fennessey, said in an interview that he “didn’t like” the bit and told Simmons as much.

A new Bloomberg report shows that The Ringer, owned by Spotify, quietly axed the sponsorship after the uproar. And Simmons is owning the mistake.

“Last spring, we thought we could integrate AI research for baked-in content segments for a couple of our shows the way some of our competitors were doing (and also leagues like the NFL were doing) — I’m always going to try to be early instead of late on something,” said Simmons in a statement to Bloomberg. “This time we learned almost immediately that those segments weren’t a fit for us — our audience just didn’t like them.”

ChatGPT sponsored segments primarily appeared on Simmons’ own podcast and The Ringer Fantasy Football Show.

As Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman reported alongside the Ringer news, many online personalities have felt the intense backlash to artificial intelligence lately. But OpenAI and Anthropic have spent a combined $13-plus million on podcast advertising in the past three months alone, according to PodScribe data Bloomberg cited.

The pushback against The Ringer’s ChatGPT deal could be a symptom of a more informed, educated audience. AI companies and their leaders have increasingly drawn Americans’ scorn as more of the economy is built on AI, corporate valuations, and data centers crop up across the country.

Credit to Simmons and Spotify for listening to the audience rather than chasing the money.

About Brendon Kleen

Brendon is an Editorial Lead at Awful Announcing overseeing digital content and special projects. He lives in Phoenix and has covered sports media for Awful Announcing since 2023.

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