Sports Illustrated, a major publication in the United States worth about $110 million, was exposed this week for having used AI to write articles and create fake author profiles to go along with them.
When contacted about this by Futurism, a science and tech news site, Sports Illustrated deleted all the articles in question.
The leading sports magazine in the nation was creating profiles with names like “Drew Ortiz” with cookie-cutter bios expressing their love for dogs and the great outdoors. Futurism noticed that none of the authors had social media presence or any history of publishing outside SI — and there were many of them, according to a source familiar with the matter. The magazine even had fake AI-generated profile pictures to go along with the phony journalists.
“The content is absolutely AI-generated,” a second source said, adding, “no matter how much they say that it’s not.”
Sports Illustrated has been publishing fake articles written by writers that don’t exist, complete with AI generated headshots. When asked about it, Sports Illustrated deleted everything. (Futurism) pic.twitter.com/YfyQwAFpBZ
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) November 27, 2023
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After Futurism reached out to Sports Illustrated about the allegations, the publication removed all AI-generated posts as well as the AI author profiles without explanation.
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Futurism received no response to their requests for comment, and then after publishing their report received a statement from The Arena Group, the corporate entity that owns Sports Illustrated.
“Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles,” the spokesperson began. “According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate. The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed content from an external, third-party company, AdVon Commerce.”
The statement went on to blame third party vendor for the articles, yet also claimed the articles were “written and edited by humans” according to said vendor. Then, bizarrely, Arena Group claimed the fake names were a defensive measure to protect the identity of the real writers:
“However, we have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy — actions we don’t condone — and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership.”
As Futurism wrote, “It sounds like The Arena Group’s investigation pretty much just involved asking AdVon whether the content was AI-generated, and taking them at their word when they said it wasn’t. Our sources familiar with the creation of the content disagree.”
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