Sports Illustrated/Internet Archive
A screenshot of one of the writer profiles that turned out to be created by AI.
CNN
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Sports Illustrated announced on Monday that it had lost several copies of its website following reports that the once-famous magazine was found to have published articles using fake author names and artificial intelligence-generated profile images. It was announced that the article had been deleted.
The report, published by Futurism, found that the magazine repeatedly published articles whose authors could not be found online except on the Sports Illustrated website. All of these articles were accompanied by AI-generated profile pictures, which Futurism also found on his digital marketplace for sale of AI-generated headshots.
During the course of reporting on Futurism, several alleged Sports Illustrated writers mysteriously disappeared from the publication’s website. Their articles then began to appear under the name of another author, who also did not appear to exist online, and whose portraits were also for sale on AI. Headshot Marketplace.
After the report was published, a spokesperson for Arena Group, which has operated and licensed Sports Illustrated since 2019, told CNN that the deleted product reviews were created by a third-party company, AdVon Commerce. He said it was a thing.
“To protect the privacy of authors, we have learned that AdVon had writers use pens or pseudonyms on certain articles. This is behavior we do not condone, and we have not published content while an internal investigation continues. “We have since terminated the partnership,” the spokesperson said. He said.
According to an Arena Group spokesperson, AdVon’s writers, editors, and researchers create content according to policies that utilize both anti-plagiarism and anti-AI software.
“We continually monitor our partners and were in the midst of a review when these allegations were raised,” a spokesperson told CNN. “AdVon assured us that all articles in question were written and edited by humans.”
AdVon did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. But the questions posed on Monday mark the second time in recent months that AdVon has been at the center of his AI publishing controversy.
In October, Reviewed, a Gannett company, came under fire after it was reported that it was using AI to produce articles. A similar investigation followed. The website included several stories written by authors who could not be found online and whose existence could not be confirmed by colleagues. However, Gannett denied that the article was written using AI.
Following Futurism’s report on Monday, the Sports Illustrated Union, which represents the magazine’s staff writers, said its members were “horrified” by the allegations.
“If true, these actions violate everything we believe about journalism,” the union said in a statement. “We regret that we were involved in such a disrespectful act towards our readers.”
Sports Illustrated writers also expressed their disgust in social media posts.
“I take seriously the weight of the Sports Illustrated byline, along with fundamental principles such as integrity, trust, and journalistic ethics,” said Emma Baccellieri, a staff writer for the magazine. Posted “It was meaningful to me long before I dreamed of working here. This report was scary to read.”
Mitch Golditch, the magazine’s other writer and editor, said, “The practices described in today’s article are a testament to the hard-working people I have had the honor of working with over the past nine years.” “It’s causing great damage to trust,” he added. Posted With X.
Arena Group is not the first publisher to fall into the trap of the rapid deployment of AI. Since the technology exploded onto the commercial scene about a year ago, several news organizations have begun deploying AI to partially automate and speed up publication of certain types of articles. However, the results were mixed. For example, the Online News Association published a practical guide for newsrooms to leverage technology.
Still, news organizations are typically wary of using AI to produce entire stories. As Gannett learned while experimenting with the technology this summer, the platform produced several unsuccessful high school sports stories.