Sports Illustrated’s parent company has fired the sports media CEO following a controversy stemming from reports that the company uses artificial intelligence to create content on its website.
Arena Group, which owns and operates Sports Illustrated, announced Monday that its board of directors has moved to fire Chief Executive Officer Ross Levinson.
The company said its board took this action to “improve the company’s operational efficiency and profitability.”
Manoj Bhargava will become interim CEO of Sports Illustrated starting this week.
Levinson’s firing comes after Sports Illustrated, a media and technology news site, revealed how it “used AI-generated profile pictures to publish commercial articles signed by non-existent writers.” This came just weeks after the bombshell report on “Futurism.”
The news sparked widespread backlash and raised new questions about the role of AI in the future of media.
Arena Group was originally Said Futurism’s report was “not accurate”.
The company said at the time: “The article in question was a product review and was content licensed from an external third-party company, AdVon Commerce.” “Many of AdVon’s e-commerce articles were published on certain of his Arena websites. We continually monitor our partners and were in the midst of an investigation when these allegations were raised. .”
Levinson has been CEO of Sports Illustrated since 2019 and previously served as publisher of the Los Angeles Times.
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