Stan learns about the ChatGPT app from Clyde and begins using it for sending Wendy romantic texts. However, his and the others' use of the app begins to spiral out of control and leads to an academic cheating scandal at South Park Elementary.
Tropes
- An Aesop: Using AI-based applications can help you, but you shouldn't use them to the point of overreliance. There are things that only a person can do, not a program on your digital device.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: It's shown that while AI-based writing can be useful, it's far from foolproof as Stan learns one of the text responses that was created for him to comfort Wendy included a claim that the same Noodle Incident that has profoundly affected her happened to him as well.
- Ambiguous Ending: Bordering on Gainax Ending. Did that ChatGPT story Stan wrote at the end to save Wendy become real? Does Wendy know he used ChatGPT to text her? Does she care?
- Book Dumb: It's reinforced through Mr. Garrison's surprised reaction to their well-written essays that Clyde and Cartman, whose essays are both about world history, something Cartman especially is shown to have a very poor grasp of (outside of the expected WWII and biblical knowledge) are far from the best students in the fourth grade.
- Bookends: The episode starts with Clyde telling Stan that ChatGPT helped his situation. The episode ends with Stan saying the same thing to Clyde.
- Brick Joke: Cartman's forged essay was titled "A Feminist Neoliberal Perspective of Post-War Afghanistan". There's at least two instances where Cartman claims that girls ruin things like slavery.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: A major hang-up that people (both in and out-of-universe) have with ChatGPT is that genuinely thoughtful and talented individuals allow themselves to get sucked into it, with Stan brushing off how much Wendy's apprehension about him not being closer to her is directly related to her clearly valuing his personality and what he has to say otherwise, and Stan seamlessly multitasking with the app without even looking at his phone, doing pretty non-mundane things like playing video games and briefly exploring AI-detection technology before just using ChatGPT to overwrite reality itself (the technology exploration was just so that Wendy couldn't find him out, but still...)
- Comically Missing the Point: When Mr. Garrison learns about ChatGPT from Rick, he realizes that now he has an easy way to grade the students' papers instead of realizing the students have been using the app to write their essays, though he was probably just so desperate to get his job done as fast as possible that he didn't really stop to think about it.
- Continuity Nod:
- One of Wendy's texts to Stan includes her asking Stan if his father is getting better referencing the previous episode where Randy got shot.
- Clyde mentioning that Bebe would kill him if she ever found out he's been using ChatGPT to text her is a reference to the wrath she displayed when she brutalized Butters two episodes prior, clearly not wanting her to get mad at him.
- The picture of Clyde in Bebe's phone has him wearing a varsity jacket as he did in "The List", while Wendy and Bebe's pictures feature them posing to be photoshopped in ''The Hobbit".
- Credits Gag: ChatGPT is billed as one of the writers for this episode, referencing how it was used to generate the script for the ending.
- A Day in the Limelight: Wendy receives one of her most prominent appearances in recent seasons in this episode.
- Dramatic Irony: Wendy thanks Stan for being "the only real thing in her life" after they start texting more. However, she doesn't know that Stan had been AI-generating all his texts to her. He wasn't even reading her texts, nor what he was saying back.
- Everyone Has Standards: Mr. Garrison is perfectly fine with using ChatGPT to grade assignments, and (at least for now) doesn't really care about his students using them to cheat on said assignments. But he's absolutely livid at the idea of using ChatGPT to create text messages to romantic partners.
- Hidden Depths:
- Wendy indicates throughout this episode that she's going through a self-hatred phase, although it's not clear what her exact struggles are beyond being noticeably more passive than usual.
- Though we don't actually see him utilize it due to him initializing reality, Stan apparently knows about the GPT language-models, since he refers to it as just GPT at one point and seems to know what the Thumb
is based on the AI technician's pretty flowery dialogue.
- Hypocritical Humor: When Mr. Garrison is praising some of the students' essays, Stan glares at Clyde, Cartman, and Butters, as if realizing they all used ChatGPT to write essays for them. Then it turns out he did, too.
- Innocently Insensitive:
- Stan doesn't seem to grasp why texting is so important to Wendy, which is why he doesn't see anything wrong with responding to Wendy's texts with thumbs-up emojis or Playing Cyrano with ChatGPT. In fact, he stops doing it after his conversation with her at the ice cream store, though by then he's in too deep.
- While Clyde doesn't seem to care about Bebe's feelings, his incredibly misguided relationship advice to Stan seemed to come out of a genuine desire to help a brother out.
- Jerkass Ball: Clyde grabs a hold of it big time in this episode, being incredibly dismissive of Bebe's texts and treating them like a chore. When his actions are about to be discovered, Clyde only seems to care about Bebe's retaliation instead of how she would feel.
- Karma Houdini:
- Stan gets off scot-free for his use of ChatGPT, with Wendy either completely forgiving him or remaining completely oblivious to what he was doing. Justified, since he specifically generated an ending in which Wendy forgave him. Clyde also doesn't get caught by Bebe for doing the same thing.
- Butters, Cartman, Clyde, and Mr. Garrison also get away unpunished for using ChatGPT for writing essays and texts. Though in Butters' case, there isn't any indication that he was doing much worse than just having essays written for him (which, given how sucky Mr. Garrison's teaching style tends to be, is understandable on some level).
- Loose Lips: As it turns out, Butters introduced Cartman to ChatGPT and Cartman came up with the plan to use it to do their homework. He then let Clyde in on the secret on the condition he tell no one, but then Clyde started using it to send romantic texts to Bebe and let Stan know about it after he came to him for help. Cartman is furious about this, reminding the others that if everyone knows about ChatGPT, then they'll realize what they've been doing and have to go back to doing their homework.
- Noodle Incident: We never learn what incident six-year-old Wendy experienced, nor anything about Stan's alleged boating accident that ChatGPT made up.
- Oh, Crap!: Stan, Cartman, Butters, Clyde, and Mr. Garrison have this when Mr. Mackey informs their class that the school board is sending a technician to investigate the use of ChatGPT at their school.
- Stan has one earlier in the Ice Cream store when he realizes just how important texting is for Wendy, and how crushed she's going to be if she finds out his texts were all a lie.
- Out of Focus: Matt Stone's characters rarely speak in this episode. All we get are a few lines from Butters and Rick and two lines from Kyle.
- Overly Long Gag: When Stan, Cartman, Clyde, and Butters are in the bathroom to find out who told everyone about ChatGPT, a nerdy kid comes in. He uses the urinal, washes his hands, and wipes them, taking an agonizingly long time before finishing. Cartman gets impatient waiting for him. When the four have another bathroom conference later in the episode, they're interrupted by the same kid again and Cartman screams at him to get out.
- Pet the Dog: Clyde might be a crappy boyfriend to Bebe, but he gets ChatGPT to write him a poem for her to show in class. Unlike with her text messages, he had nothing to gain from doing this.
- Playing Cyrano: Stan uses ChatGPT to write love texts to Wendy. Given a Shout-Out with "Every Letter" from the soundtrack to Cyrano playing during the montage.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: The AI technician is correct that Wendy's phone is full of chatbot writing. However, it's not because she's the student who's been cheating on essays, it's because it's filled with all the text messages Stan sent her.
- Rule of Funny: Apparently, none of the fourth-graders know how to write acceptable essays, despite many of them being shown to be great extemporaneous public speakers and competent writers (Wendy, Kyle, Tolkien, and even Stan himself) and otherwise being the best in specific subjects that most South Park kids struggle with (Heidi and Butters are shown to be the strongest science and math students, respectively). Given this is Mr. Garrison, though, he may have just forgotten to actually teach them the midterm material and just didn't bother to take accountability.
- Shout-Out:
- As mentioned above, "Every Letter" from Cyrano plays over Wendy basking in the AI texts.
- Shadowbane, the AI technician, is a reference to Marc Singer's title role in The Beastmaster, strange gestures and all. Bonus points in that Singer had previously starred in a videotaped version of Cyrano de Bergerac in 1974.
- Stealth Pun: Cartman complains about how women ruined slavery, then complains about how he somehow can't explain what he means because he can't use ChatGPT anymore when Butters calls him on it. What Cartman's refusing to admit is that both women and ChatGPT have him by the balls, while he wants it to be the other way around. (It's shown several times that Cartman thinks girls have literal balls.)
- Stylistic Suck: The episode's resolution consists of a script that was generated by the ChatGPT app, which is very evident from the characters' stilted dialogue and errors like Cartman calling Stan a "Dumb Jew" instead of Kyle.
- Take That!:
- While the episode eventually gives an open-minded opinion about ChatGPT and other AI-based applications, it still takes some shots at some of the negative aspects of it such as people using it for personal gain (the students who use it to write school essays for them) and some people being too lazy to even check the work that the AI-based apps made for them (as seen when Stan realizes that one of the text responses that ChatGPT created for him included a tall tale about an incident that happened to him in Switzerland when he was six years old).
- Mr. Garrison points out that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if ChatGPT were to infiltrate Hollywood, as their best screenwriters already churn out uninspired crap. He even goes as far as to say that ChatGPT might improve cinema.
- The Stylistic Suck resolution can be seen as one towards people who believe AI can be used as a substitute for writers and artists, as it demonstrates some of the flaws of AI technology (i.e. stilted dialogue, obvious errors).
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
- Clyde telling Stan about ChatGPT when he was supposed to keep it a secret causes the School to send a Board Technician after they overuse it. It's a Downplayed example, as Garrison found out about the app by himself, so it might not have mattered much in the grand scheme of things. That doesn't stop Cartman from giving him hell for it.
- Stan's use of the app to text Wendy almost gets her arrested when the technician finds traces of the AI on her phone.
- Woman Scorned: Clyde is afraid Bebe will kill him if she finds out he's been using ChatGPT in their text messages.
