The Guardian published a GPT-3-generated op-ed on 8 September 2020, but the article was not one untouched response from a machine. Editors wrote the prompts, Liam Porr ran GPT-3 to generate eight drafts, and Guardian staff selected, cut, and rearranged passages to make the published composite.
What The Guardian published
The opinion article appeared under the headline “A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?” on 8 September 2020. Its standfirst said the experiment aimed “To convince us robots come in peace.” The first-person text reassured readers that AI did not want to harm people and described itself as serving humanity.
That argument was built into the assignment: the prompt directed GPT-3 to persuade readers that they had nothing to fear from AI. The article’s confident voice therefore reflects a requested rhetorical position, not evidence that the model had feelings, intentions, or independent beliefs.
How the article was made
- Editors set the task. Guardian editors wrote an introductory prompt in the voice of an AI claiming it was not a threat, then asked for a short, roughly 500-word op-ed in simple, concise language.
- Liam Porr ran GPT-3. Porr, then a computer science student at Berkeley, supplied the prompts to the model.
- The model produced eight drafts. The editors said the outputs differed in style and quality: some were clear and usable, while others wandered or introduced irrelevant material.
- Editors assembled the published version. Rather than print one response unchanged, they selected passages across the outputs, cut lines and paragraphs, and rearranged material into a composite.
The Guardian’s account of the process describes the variation among drafts and the editorial choices behind the final piece. One rejected passage, for example, confused the intended publication with Google and digressed about CAPTCHA.
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What “written by GPT-3” means here
GPT-3 supplied the source text for selected passages, but humans determined the subject, persuasive goal, voice, and constraints; ran the model; chose which material survived; and edited the sequence and wording. The most precise description is a human-curated composite built from model-generated drafts.
Albert Fox Cahn’s response in The Guardian argued that framing the piece as robot-authored was misleading because people controlled the prompt, perspective, and final selection. The documented production process supports that critique, but it does not settle a universal definition of authorship. Whether the headline feels fair depends partly on whether “written by” means generating the prose or exercising control over the finished argument and article.
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What the editor said about the human work
Amana Fontanella-Khan, Guardian US Opinion Editor, wrote: “Editing GPT-3’s op-ed was no different to editing a human op-ed. We cut lines and paragraphs, and rearranged the order of them in some places. Overall, it took less time to edit than many human op-eds.” This is her description of the editing experience, not an independent time study.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.GPT-3’s scale is not proof of understanding
The GPT-3 paper by Brown and coauthors describes the model evaluated in their study as an autoregressive language model with 175 billion parameters. That figure provides technical context; it does not establish quality, understanding, or autonomy. The op-ed’s claims about AI’s motives should likewise be read as generated rhetoric shaped by the prompt, not as testimony from a thinking machine.
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