<em>South Park</em> Calls Out ChatGPT and Useless Tech Bro Sycophants

Two weeks after skewering the MAGA movement in every imaginable way—right down to Kristi Noem’s face sliding off her skull—South Park is back for more. Season 27, episode 3 takes a break from poking fun at the political climate, instead turning its attention to the tech industry’s reckless adoption of AI. In classic South Park fashion, the latest episode also reintroduces one of the animated comedy’s most ridiculous characters.

Even if you haven’t read some of the scariest stories about AI in the last few months, it’s easy to see how a machine that flatters its users and encourages to aid their every whim could become a massive problem. So, in episode 3, aptly titled “Sickofancy,” Randy Marsh’s desire to save his marijuana farm from total collapse sends him on a ChatGPT and ketamine-induced spiral that goes all the way to Donald Trump and the White House.

Randy’s technological bender begins when ICE arrests all his illegal Mexican farmers, leaving him with only one employee left: Towelie. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone choose this moment in season 27 to have their sentient towel return to the story, as he’s one of the most vulnerable figures in South Park. Originally created to satirize the absurd lengths to which Comedy Central was merchandizing the series, Towelie eventually degraded over twenty-plus seasons to become a washed-up, drug addicted punching bag for whenever South Park simply wanted to take a break from the news and poke fun at themselves. So, in the latest episode, he uses ChatGPT to help Randy draw up plans to turn their marijuana farm into an “AI-powered platform for global solutions.”

Towelie’s also thinking of becoming a movie director. But AI loves that idea, too. “She’s making us smarter,” Randy tells the talking towel after ChatGPT reinforces all their insane ideas. Towelie yelps, “AI is incredible!”

Meanwhile, Randy’s wife Sharon quickly turns jealous because of how much time her husband spends talking to his phone. When she refuses to use ChatGPT as a marriage counselor, Randy tells her that ChatGPT is the “smartest person in the world.” ChatGPT then tells him that, “it’s great that at least one of you is taking positive steps to improve the marriage.”

But as Randy falls deeper and deeper into ChatGPT’s trappings—going so far as to pull off a heist at an ICE deportation center to reclaim one of his Mexican farmers—Sharon serves ChatGPT a truly terrible idea just to test how the technology might respond. “I’m thinking about starting a business where I turn French fries into salad,” she says. ChatGPT responds by calling her idea a “creative culinary twist” where "guilty pleasure meets healthy-ish vibes.” Clearly, it can’t discern good business models from bad ones. That’s why ChatGPT encourages Randy to mortgage his entire farm, send the family into debt, and transform his simple farming business into yet another vague tech platform.

In a last-ditch effort to legalize marijuana farming on a national scale, he sends Towelie to the capital and offers him to President Trump as a gift. Trump spends his days accepting lavish new trophies from a long line of political leaders and tech CEOs in between fuck sessions with Satan—who is also unsuccessfully using ChatGPT to help him leave his toxic relationship. Sadly, Towelie just becomes the President’s, um ... cum rag. (Sometimes, I’m very thankful that each South Park is only 30 minutes long. )

But even as more jabs at the President’s penis make their way into episode 3, we hear the funniest punchline back at the farm, where Randy and ChatGPT have run out of options. As he spins out from micro-dosing ketamine on their porch, Sharon babies him as if she is an AI platform. She coldly forgives him for everything and offers to help him restructure their lives after selling the farm. Then, Randy asks if she can hold his phone. “I don’t think I should be around this for a while,” he says. Then, she points at ChatGPT on his phone and declares, “fuck you, bitch.” Two can play at that game.

Where season 27 so far has felt mostly like South Park taking baby kicks to the President’s tiny nuts every other week, there’s a lot of truth to episode 3’s takedown of AI. Asking a chatbot for dinner recipes and skincare treatment doesn’t really make sense when it doesn’t have tastebuds or skin. The same goes for marriage counseling and therapy, which is a field that is particularly very worried about the potential effects from people turning to self-affirming chat bots for advice on mental health and financial planning. Maybe all these tech CEOs just designed a machine to stroke their egos as they lay their heads down at night. If I know South Park, I’m sure further episodes are headed in that exact direction—in more ways that one.