Sports Illustrated cover
Did Sports Illustrated use artificial intelligence – AI – to write a story? Well, that’s what some people have alleged but the magazine is denying the charges as per an article in Futurism.
Specifically, the publication said that Sports Illustrated author Drew Ortiz does not really exist. And Futurism also reported that his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots.
The parent company of Sports Illustrated, The Arena Group, denied the accusation, saying the cited articles were actually third party content.
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“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,” it said in a statement.
“AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans,” said Arena. “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.”
And the Sports Illustrated employees’ union was really annoyed by the allegations.
“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 profile,” said the union in a statement. “If true, these practices violate everything we believe in about journalism. We deplore being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers.”
“We want to be very clear,” it added. “What is described in this Futurism story does not represent the hardworking journalists who make up the SI Union. For nearly 70 years, Sl staff members have held themselves to the highest possible ethical standards. As members of the SI Union, we are proud to be part of that legacy and work every day to protect it. We expect management to do the same.”
This comes at the same time that the Merriam-Webster dictionary fittingly picked the word “authentic” for its Word of the Year 2023.
And just think about all of the AI produced materials out there. There are fake people made up with millions of followers on social media. Where in the past real people photoshopped their images to look better and slimmer, now we have models and others created entirely by computers.
Schools are having a really tough time knowing whether their students are presenting their own authentic work or if they had it made up using services like ChatGTP.
So it is no wonder that people are thinking even prominent publications like Sports Illustrated might be using AI to write their stories.
