4 hours ago
9
New York Yankees pitcher Cam Schlittler was mocked for appearing to use Chat GPT to write a statement that he shared on Wednesday night about tension with the Boston Red Sox fanbase.
Boston-born Schlittler underlined his emergence as a promising right-handed pitcher during the Yankees' playoff run in October and made no secret of his disdain for the Red Sox during their postseason series - the Yankees' fierce rivals and also the team in the city he is from.
But his taunts have made him enemy No 1 among the passionate Sox fanbase and after claiming that his family had been targeted with abuse from Boston fans, moved to try and diffuse tensions.
On Wednesday, he said he was proud to be from Boston but was 'caught off guard' by fans attacking his family.
Schlittler wrote: 'Anyone who knows me knows how highly I speak of Boston and how much I love the city. I knew how l’d be received starting that game, but I didn’t expect people from the area where I grew up to attack my family.'
But fans were quick to question just how genuine Schlittler's statement was after spotting a couple of tell-tale signs indicating that his statement was written by AI.
Yankees' Cam Schlittler tried to calm tensions with Boston Red Sox fans on Wednesday night
But fans spotted signs his statement had been written with some help from Chat GPT
The most obvious sign was that in the bottom right corner of his statement, there appeared to be the edge of the Chat GPT text bubble which had not been fully cropped out.
Fans also noticed the extended hyphens in part of Schlittler's statement, something Chat GPT is renowned for using when it generates an answer to a question it has been posed.
'Using ChatGPT for this is hilarious. Remove the EM dashes and crop out the bubble next time buddy,' one fan wrote back to Schlittler.
'I hate piling up on a young athlete but c’mon man that’s chat gpt,' another fan commented. 'Hopefully you laugh at this someday.'
Another, more merciless observation read: 'LMAOOOOO CHATGPT BUBBLE AT THE BOTTOM.'
A different follower wrote back: 'Bro just straight up used chat GPT, at least remove the — to make it less obvious man.'
Schlittler, 24, mocked a Red Sox fan who predicted Boston would beat the Yankees in the playoffs, retweeting them moments after New York's series win by saying: 'Not this year'.
He also posted about 'drinking dat dirty water' when the Yankees beat the Sox, a clear reference to the Red Sox victory song 'Dirty Water'.
The 24-year-old Schlittler emerged as a promising pitcher for the Yankees last season
The pitcher was also filmed leaving a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in October, where he told a fan 'f*** Boston'.
In the decisive game between the Yankees and Red Sox in the Bronx, Schlittler threw eight scoreless innings and struck out 12 hitters in the process.
It's unclear exactly what prompted Schlittler's statement on Wednesday. But he clearly wanted it to be seen - he pinned the post to the top of his X feed also wrote: 'I don’t have a PR team and blue jays fans can stay mad.'
It had been viewed 1.7m times by the early hours of Thursday morning but with many comments highlighting his use of AI, it may well have caused more problems than it solved.
