In a story that has generated both shock and disdain, Futurism’s Maggie Harrison reports that Sports Illustrated published stories that were produced or partially produced by artificial intelligence, and that some stories had bylines of fake authors. To be clear, the disdain was directed at Sports Illustrated.
But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by any of this, as I’ll explain in a moment. First, the details.
When asked about fake authors, an anonymous source described as a “person involved with the creation of the content” told Harrison, “There's a lot. I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist. At the bottom (of the page) there would be a photo of a person and some fake description of them like, ‘oh, John lives in Houston, Texas. He loves yard games and hanging out with his dog, Sam.’ Stuff like that. It's just crazy.”
The fake authors even included AI-generated mugshots. If true, that is pretty gross — photos of authors who don’t actually exist, to go along with made-up bios that included made-up hobbies and even made-up pets.
Another source told Harrison, “The content is absolutely AI-generated, no matter how much they say that it’s not.”
Harrison wrote that after reaching out to Sports Illustrated’s publisher, The Arena Group, the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation.
Harrison wrote that none of the stories that appeared to be generated by AI with fake authors “contained any disclosure about the use of AI or that the writer wasn't real, though they did eventually gain a disclaimer explaining that the content was ‘created by a 3rd party,’ and that the ‘Sports Illustrated editorial staff are not involved in the creation of this content.’”
It actually gets even worse, if you can imagine. Harrison wrote that sometimes an author's name was removed and replaced with another fake author. Harrison wrote, “Each time an author was switched out, the posts they supposedly penned would be reattributed to the new persona, with no editor's note explaining the change in byline.”
The stories in question do not appear to be the traditional sports features we’re all familiar with when it comes to Sports Illustrated. The stories were more along the lines of product features and reviews. For example, one story from 2022 was about the best volleyballs.
Not that it makes any difference.
The Sports Illustrated Union put out a statement saying it was “horrified” by the details in the Futurism story. It went on to say, “If true, these practices violate everything we believe in about journalism. We deplore being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers.”
The union went on to call for “answers and transparency” from The Arena Group, adding, “We demand the company commit to adhering to basic journalistic standards, including not publishing computer-written stories by fake people.”
It also said, “What is described in this Futurism story does not represent the hardworking journalists who make up the SI Union.”
It was signed by “The Humans of the SI Union.”
Then, late in the day on Monday, a spokesperson for The Arena Group put out this statement:
Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. 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. 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. According to AdVon, their writers, editors, and researchers create and curate content and follow a policy that involves using both counter-plagiarism and counter-AI software on all content. However, we have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy – actions we strongly condemn – and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership.
The Arena Group has operated Sports Illustrated since 2019.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Rosenberg tweeted earlier in the day, “Our staff works so hard to carry on Sports Illustrated's tradition of great journalism. It's so disappointing when people* in our own company undermine our work.”
So now to the part where we shouldn’t be surprised.
Back in February, The Wall Street Journal’s Alexandra Bruell wrote a story with the headline, “Sports Illustrated Publisher Taps AI to Generate Articles, Story Ideas.”
Bruell wrote that The Arena Group, which also publishes Men’s Journal, TheStreet and Dealbreaker, was using AI to generate stories that pull information from its own library of content.
Bruell wrote, “Some articles in Men’s Journal are already AI-generated, the company said, such as ‘Proven Tips to Help You Run Your Fastest Mile Yet,’ and ‘The Best Ways for Men Over 40 to Maintain Muscle.’ The articles were created based on information from 17 years of archived stories from Men’s Fitness, a brand that exists under Men’s Journal.”
Those stories included a disclaimer that said they used “deep-learning tools for retrieval combined with OpenAI’s large language model for various stages of the workflow.” They also said, “This article was reviewed and fact-checked by our editorial team.”
Bruell wrote at the time, “Arena Group said it isn’t looking to replace journalists. Rather, the goal is to support content workflows, video creation, newsletters, sponsored content and marketing campaigns.”
None of this makes it right. But the point is we should’ve seen this all coming.
And yet Monday’s Futurism story has again unsettled journalists concerned about AI-created content, especially when you see a name such as Sports Illustrated involved. Earlier this year, Gannett paused using AI-generated content for some high school sports stories. (It’s the second item in my newsletter from Aug. 29.)
Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod wrote, “As AI technology becomes increasingly more prominent, it’s likely only a matter of time until it’s an accepted part of the sports media experience. Thus far, however, the use of AI in the industry has predominantly been premature and only resulted in embarrassment for well-established brands. That now includes Sports Illustrated, which has seen no shortage of controversies since it was purchased by Authentic Brands Group and licensed to The Arena Group (formerly Maven) in 2019. It’s hard to imagine that the use of AI-generated content will do anything but continue to damage an already diminished trust from its audience.”
In a strongly worded statement on X, former Sports Illustrated writer Jeff Pearlman wrote, “It sucks,” and mentioned some of the legends that built Sports Illustrated into an elite publication: Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins, Richard Hoffer and Steve Rushin.
“But this is what we've done,” Pearlman continued, “with the continued corporatization of media. These companies don't care about content. At all. It's entirely clicks and ads and ads and clicks. That's it, that's all. I'm not particularly sad, because the Sports Illustrated I loved and worked for … 52 issues a year, 5,000-word pieces, a devotion to craftsmanship, detail, heart and love … is long gone. It just is. This isn't Sports Illustrated. It's some bull (expletive) company picking off the last pieces of rotted fat from the carcass of something that was truly great.”
