After Sports Illustrated embarrassed itself this week, by creating fake AI-generated authors and then covering it up, The Pat McAfee Show crew had a field day.
Not only did McAfee go in on the despicable journalistic and business practices of fake authors and questionable content from a legacy outlet like SI, but the show also staged a moment of silence for the brand and crafted AI-generated author bios to finish off SI’s counterfeit content creators.
“The future is f***ed,” McAfee aptly said.
McAfee praised what SI used to be before decrying it as a sham going the same way as many big corporations, replacing human work and creativity with machines and technology.
“What a f***ing s***show,” McAfee said. “To be clear though, Sports Illustrated was awesome. They just can’t hire humans, so they need fake ones.”
McAfee really went at our corporate overlords, taking advantage of the freedoms of the digital exclusive hour of the show.
“There are f***ing idiots in positions of power in 2023 I think, more than ever before,” McAfee said. “I don’t know what it was like before, but now that we’re getting to experience it, it’s like, ‘you are a f***ing idiot.’ It’s kind of inspiring actually, because it’s like you got to that position and you’ve got no brain. So that inspires me a pretty good amount.”
McAfee and Co. then put on a dramatic moment of silence for Sports Illustrated.
“There are more people talking about sports than ever before, and Sports Illustrated said, ‘we need less people, more content,'” McAfee snickered. “Give us more of them f***ing AI. They’ve got about six of them. They need to be attractive but not too attractive. They need to look smart but not standoffish.”
The show then cycled through hilarious bios for the fake authors uncovered by Futurism, Drew Ortiz and Sora Tanaka.
Knowing his corporate bosses could align with this crappy capitalistic thinking, McAfee also threw a jab at Disney and ESPN.
“Are ESPN’s Twitter accounts working again? Maybe we can get AI to do that,” McAfee said to close. “Are they doing anything?”
McAfee’s main point is a good one. Sports continue to draw huge audiences in-person and on television. Sports content rules on social media and YouTube. McAfee’s personal story is proof alone.
And yet at places like SI, management convinces itself that the real answer to satiate audiences’ burning demand for sports content is to churn it through machine learning and auto-generated nonsense.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.