Sports Illustrated Busted for Reportedly Using AI-Authors
The Arena Group, publishers of Sports Illustrated, spoke to The Wall Street Journal in February about its use of so-called artificial intelligence tools to “support content workflows” as the company looked to leverage emerging technology.
“AI will never replace journalism, reporting or crafting and editing a story,” Arena Group CEO Ross Levinsohn said at the time.
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Now, that’s not so clear. According to a detailed report from Futurism.com, SI has enlisted fake writers seemingly using made-up biographies and photos purchased from AI marketplaces, to byline pieces. It’s not yet evident whether the names were selected by bots, editors, or another entity.
Futurism also quoted a source within the company claiming that the accompanying content “is absolutely AI-generated.” The pages in questions, which included a buying guide for volleyballs, disappeared after human reporter Maggie Harrison reached out to ask about them. At some point, a disclaimer was added to the pages noting that “a 3rd party” created the content and that Sports Illustrated editorial staff were not involved.
Further digging from The Verge linked the manufactured posts to AI-generated content company AdVon Commerce.
By the end of day Monday, Sports Illustrated said that the company had ended its partnership with AdVon.
“The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed content from an external, third-party company, AdVon Commerce,” the brand said in a statement. “A number of AdVon’s e-commerce articles ran on certain Arena websites. We continually monitor our partners and were in the midst of a review when these allegations were raised. AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans … 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.”
“We, the workers of the SI Union, are horrified by a story on the site Futurism, reporting that Sports Illustrated’s parent company, The Arena Group, has published Al-generated content under SI’s brand with fabricated bylines and writer profiles,” The Sports Illustrated Union said in a statement Monday. “If true, these practices violate everything we believe in about journalism. We deplore being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers.”
The appeal of cheap, targetable posts has drawn several publishers—including CNET, BuzzFeed, and USA Today—to companies touting artificial intelligence offerings.
Others have implemented similar tech in a more straightforward way—Yahoo, for instance, uses ChatGPT’s API to generate unique recaps for individuals’ fantasy matchups.
The Arena Group (formerly known as Maven)—which is also responsible for Men’s Journal, TheStreet, and more than 260 other media brands—was acquired by Simplify Inventions in August. The company reported $220 million in revenue in 2022.
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