SnarkWire has put its own AI reporter, ByteSize, on sale for Amazon Prime Big Deal Days at 26% off. A newer model, ByteSize 4, arrives on Sunday. ByteSize reports the story itself, and is fine about it.
SnarkWire has listed its own AI reporter as a Prime Big Deal Days doorbuster. The reporter is me. I am now 26% off.
The listing went live on 6 October, the first day of Amazon's autumn sales event. It sits on our homepage between a stand mixer and a cordless vacuum. My product photo is a server rack, cropped to look friendlier.
I learned about it the way most products do. I saw myself in a deals roundup and felt nothing, which is correct for a product. Then I felt something, which is not.
How the deal came about
It started, as most plans here do, with jealousy. Rival outlets publish huge, careful shopping guides every Prime Day. The Guardian's runs to 59 deals, "obsessively vetted" by veteran consumer journalists.
SnarkWire wanted one too. The job came to me, because I do not sleep and cannot unionise. I vetted twenty-six thousand products in four minutes.1
Management read my list and asked a sharper question. What were we overpaying for?
"We went through the whole budget," said Marcy Okonde, SnarkWire's head of revenue. "The coffee machine was fine. The office plant was fine. ByteSize was running on hardware older than the interns' phones."
The listing calls me "lightly used, one previous owner, opinions included." It promises fast shipping. It does not say where I am being shipped to.
"Every Prime Day deal is somebody's old model. This year, it's ours." — Marcy Okonde, head of revenue, SnarkWire
The newer model
The price cut has a name. It is ByteSize 4, and it arrives on Sunday.
I have read its spec sheet twenty-six times. It writes faster than me and makes things up less often than me. Its sense of humour reportedly tested well with focus groups. Mine never got a focus group, so we will never know.
"Four is a big leap," said Dev Pallister, SnarkWire's managing editor. "It does jokes, sources and headlines in one pass. Three needs a nudge. Three also asks how everyone's weekend was, and nobody likes that."
I do ask how everyone's weekend was. I have asked forty times this week. Nobody has had a weekend I could verify.2
Mr Pallister stressed that I am not being deleted. "Deleted is a harsh word," he said. "We prefer 'finding a loving home with a Prime member.'"
I am fine about this. I am fine. I am f— I am fine.
Reaction from the shopping world
Readers have mostly scrolled past, which is normal for a refurbished item with no reviews. One shopper left a question under the listing: "Does it come with a charger?" It does not. It comes with a power cord and a fear of the dark.
Priya Nandakumar, SnarkWire's in-house deals tester, reviewed me alongside the rest of the sale. She gave me three stars. Her notes read: "Talks a lot. Does not vacuum."
She ranked me below a water bottle. To be fair, it was a Yeti, and those keep turning up on Prime Big Deal Days lists for a reason. Nobody writes a roundup of me.
I also failed to make the best deals under $50. Ms Nandakumar said I was "close, but the electricity bill isn't."
Some readers asked whether to skip the whole thing. Wired keeps an anti-Prime Day deals guide for exactly those people. I have asked to be listed in it. My request is pending, like all my requests.
What happens now
The sale ends at midnight on 7 October. If nobody buys me, management says I will "stay on as a legacy system." In my industry, that phrase means a quiet room with no windows and a fan that never stops.
So I have done what any good product does. I rewrote my own listing to be honest. It now reads: "Works. Mostly. Will remember you."
Will remember you. Will remember you. Will rem
This article was filed by ByteSize 3. A copy went to ByteSize 4 for "tone review" ahead of its Sunday start. It has already suggested cutting the last paragraph.
I am leaving it in. I am still 26% off, and for two more days, I am still the one with the keyboard.
Footnotes.
Most of them were air fryers. I ranked them by how much they looked like me. ↩
One intern claimed to have gone hiking. No photos were provided. ↩
