Sports Illustrated responds to allegations it published AI-generated articles by fake writers

A bombshell in the sports media industry broke Monday as Futurism reported that Sports Illustrated has published multiple articles written by fake, AI-generated authors, with at least some of the articles themselves having been produced by AI.

Per Futurism, the articles disappeared after the outlet reached out to the outlet’s publisher, The Arena Group.

Archived versions of the articles in question reveal overly generic and robotic-sounding writing, including a review of volleyballs written by Drew Ortiz. As Futurism notes, Ortiz has no apparent work history outside of his bylines at Sports Illustrated, and his headshot can be found on a website that sells AI-generated headshots. It also appears that Sports Illustrated would periodically scrub the apparently AI-generated writer profiles in favor of new ones.

While The Arena Group didn’t respond to requests for comments to Futurism, they released a statement shortly after several of its staffers reacted unfavorably to the AI content coverup.

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.

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…

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) November 27, 2023

Awful Announcing obtained an internal memo that was sent by Ross Levinsohn — CEO of The Arena Group and Sports Illustrated — to staffers and the message was verbatim the one that was relayed to the public by a “spokesperson for The Arena Group.”

The internal e-mail was sent out just a mere 15 minutes before the public statement and is the only form of communication that S.I. employees have had with upper management about the alleged AI content coverup.

Sports Illustrated says that it has ended its partnership with the company that provided the AI-generated content and is conducting an internal investigation. The response in essence deflects blame from S.I., which states it didn’t publish the articles, but licensed and ran them on its website.

Since being purchased by Authentic Brands Group and listened to The Arena Group (formerly Maven) in 2019, Sports Illustrated has been embroiled in controversies. It’s hard to imagine that this will play well with an already diminished audience, especially with the internal backlash we’ve seen across social media.

[Sports Illustarted]