The cursed pattern continues: following a baffling and error-ridden turn to AI content, the once-acclaimed business publication Quartz has been sold off and its editorial team almost entirely axed — making it the latest media brand to see low-quality AI use precede mass layoffs.

As the business publication's cofounder Zach Seward, who now leads editorial AI initiatives at The New York Times, explained in a blog post yesterday, Quartz has changed hands several times since its launch back in 2012. Before last week's sale, it was owned by the digital media conglomerate G/O Media, whose ever-controversial CEO Jim Spanfeller famously misspelled Quartz when announcing G/O's 2022 purchase of the site (he spelled it "quarts," which is just a completely different word.)

Fast forward three years later, and as of last week, Quartz has yet another new owner: a Canadian software company called Redbrick, which bought Quartz and the commerce site The Inventory from G/O for an undisclosed amount, as Axios first reported. Every editorial staffer at Quartz, with the exception of its editor in chief and executive editor, was fired as a result of the deal.

"Quartz is now a zombie brand, which is the most cynical move in media," Seward wrote. "I never wanted to write this piece while good people were still working at Quartz. Now it can be laid to rest."

In January 2024, Spanfeller told Axios that, after having sold Jezebel and Lifehacker in 2023, G/O wasn't looking to sell its full portfolio. But by the end of the year, it had unloaded both Gizmodo and The Onion — the respective "G" and "O" in its name — as well as The A.V. Club, The Takeout, and Deadspin. Earlier this year, G/O also sold the automotive blog Jalopnik. As it stands, the media owner now has just two sites remaining in its portfolio: Kotaku and The Root.

That all said, given Spanfeller's recent track record, it's not too surprising to see G/O cast off a few more brands. Another clue that, in hindsight, feels like writing on the wall? Its recent — and bad — attempt to use AI to cough up news and earnings articles.

Indeed, prior to its many recent sales, G/O tried to publish AI-generated content at nearly every site it eventually peddled off. And these ill-fated AI efforts were among the most cynical and low-quality in the media industry.

Perhaps the most notorious example of G/O's AI cynicism took place at Gizmodo, the tech publication now owned by the European tech firm Keleops, where G/O's leadership gave Gizmodo's editorial staff next to no warning before publishing a horrendously bad "Star Wars" listicle filled with inaccuracies. It also fired Gizmodo's Spanish-language writers in an attempt to replace them with machine translations of Gizmodo's English-language work.

Elsewhere, Futurism's reporting found that G/O published dozens of AI articles at the venerable sports blog Deadspin that contained outdated and inaccurate information, as well as content to the beloved film blog the A.V. Club that was copied word-for-word from IMDb. (Deadspin was later sold to the startup Lineup Publishing, and the A.V. Club to Past Media.) Jalopnik, we noticed, was publishing what appears to be automated content under the byline "Jalopnik Bot" up until late February 2025, when it was sold to Static Media.

Most of these sales unfortunately coincided with large layoffs — a trend that we've seen across the media landscape, including at Sports Illustrated, CNET, and the Village Voice and other alt-weeklies, among others.

Sadly, Quartz and the Inventory are no different.

As Aftermath first reported in January, Quartz, which had already been publishing AI-generated writeups of earnings reports attributed to "Quartz Intelligence Newsroom," had started publishing short, AI-spun news articles under the same byline. When we combed through the automated news hits, we found that Quartz Intelligence Newsroom had cited other obvious AI slop as sources in its "reporting," and even spewed out glaring misinformation.

At the foot of each post, G/O included a disclaimer noting that "while we strive for accuracy and timeliness, due to the experimental nature of this technology we cannot guarantee that we'll always be successful in that regard." Right.

The Inventory, meanwhile, has been using AI to crank out shopping content for months now; those posts are each outfitted with a similar disclaimer declaring that it was "generated by an AI engine which may produce inaccurate information."

The Gizmodo Media Group Union, which represents workers at G/O brands including Quartz, cited the Quartz slop in a powerful statement about the sale and mass firings.

"Jim Spanfeller has fired the editorial staff of Quartz after loading it up with AI slop and selling it to a Canadian firm," reads the statement. "It's a new low for a company that has tried to disrespect, undermine, and exploit its newsroom at every turn."

"G/O management's most cynical display yet comes in the middle of negotiations for our next contract," the statement continues. "We're heartbroken over the loss of more incredible colleagues as Spanfeller continues his race to the bottom and will continue fighting for a fair contract for those who remain."

Quartz's editor in chief Dan Hirschhorn, one of the site's two remaining editorial stafers, told Axios in a statement that the "way we connect with audiences is evolving and today marks a new chapter for Quartz as we work with Redbrick to help shape the future of media as the landscape rapidly transforms."

Redbrick CEO Tobyn Sowden, for his part, told Axios that "as the media landscape continues to shift, the only way to survive and thrive is by embracing the advancements in innovation to connect and engage with audiences."

We reached out to Redbrick to ask whether AI is one of those innovations, but didn't hear back by the time of publishing.

More on Quartz: Quartz Just Published an AI-Generated Article That Absolutely Butchers the Situation With Boeing’s Stranded Astronauts


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