The integration of AI into our work, play, and lives in general is happening, but it is also highly debated.
How can we effectively utilize this emerging technology ethically? The recent situation at Sports Illustrated is one of many issues arising in the face of AI.
So, let’s take a look at what happened, and what may have led to the firing of former Arena Group CEO Ross Levinsohn.
Arena Group Says One Thing Has Nothing to do with The Other
The Arena Group is a digital media publisher that owns over 200 brands. These include TheStreet, The Spun, Parade, and Sports Illustrated.
However, Arena Group CEO Levinsohn has been fired just weeks after accusations that Sports Illustrated is publishing AI-generated articles by people who don’t exist.
Levinsohn was replaced by Manoj Bhargava, the founder of the 5 Hour Energy Drink.
A spokesperson for the Bhargava told the BBC that Levinsohn’s removal “had absolutely nothing to do with the AI issue at all”.
However, it is interesting to note that following this scandal, the Arena Group fired 3 of its major executives. This includes chief operating officer Andrew Kraft, media president Rob Barrett and corporate counsel Julie Fenster.
All of these firings occured about a month after Futurism published a report that Sports Illustrated was publishing fake articles with fake author names and headshots, all generated by AI.
However, despite claiming that the report is false, Sports Illustrated removed all of the articles and launched an internal investigation.
Where Did These Allegedly AI-Generated Articles Come From?
Arena Group says that they licensed the content in question from a third-party publisher. This publisher is called Advon Commerce. On their LinkedIn, the company tagline reads ‘ML/AI Solutions for E-Commerce.’
Advon Commerce is an e-commerce company that uses AI in its work with retailers and publishers.
In a statement in November, The Arena Group claimed that Advon Commerce told them that all of the articles in question were written by human beings. They also claimed that Advon uses software to limit plagiarism and AI-generated content.
According to The Arena Group, the authors of the articles are not AI-generated people who never existed. Instead, they are real people using pseudonyms to protect their privacy.
Here is one of the allegedly fake AI-generated author biographies.
The claim that real human writers in the world of sports journalism would use pseudonyms and fake profiles to protect their identity simply doesn’t make that much sense.
After all, sports writers want to build careers. They want a strong portfolio. They want credit for their work.
The Futurism Report
On November 27, 2023, Maggie Harrison published an article for Futurism. This article exposed the situation. It’s titled:
Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers
We asked them about it — and they deleted everything.
While the profile of AI-generated writer Drew Ortiz (pictured above) says:
Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature. Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn’t out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents’ farm.
It turns out that this man does not exist online. He has no social media presence and no publishing history.
Every writer of online content today has some traceable publishing history. The nature of their work demands it.
However, the real nail in the coffin for Sports Illustrated is that this headshot is for sale on a site that creates AI-generated headshots. On the site, his headshot is described as a “neutral white young adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes.”
All The Hallmarks of AI-Generated Content
A source close to the creation of the content, who chose to remain anonymous, told Futurism:
“There’s a lot. I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist.”
So, what kind of content do these fake people produce? Content that seems like it was produced by an algorithm. The content strings together words without human understanding.
Even though Sports Illustrated deleted the articles, you can still find them on the Wayback Machine and other internet archives.
Here is a snippet of an article on buying the perfect volleyball. It was published by Drew Ortiz in September of 2022.
Volleyball can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with. You’ll have to drill in the fundamentals in your head before you can really play the game the way it was meant to be played, and for that, you’ll need a dedicated space to practice and a full-sized volleyball.
It is hard to play volleyball without an actual ball to practice with.
This has a lot of the hallmarks of AI-generated writing that has not been edited by a human.
Technically it is correct because it lists obvious statements related to a subject. However, it’s very awkward and lacks any flow or personality.
The Chain of Events
Initially, Futurism reached out The Arena Group with questions. They discovered several AI-generated profiles and articles on Sports Illustrated. While The Arena Group did not respond, they did delete all of the articles and authors.
After Futurism published their article, The Arena Group released 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 don’t condone — and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership.
Essentially, they say that all of the allegedly fake authors are real. Also, they are terminating their work with Advon because they let authors use pseudonyms.
Focus On The Real Allegations
This statement also completely ignores the main allegation of Futurism. They claim that Sports Illustrated was publishing fake articles by fake people, and trying to pass them off as real.
This is fundamentally dishonest toward their readers. It is unethical journalism.
Futurism calls this a “staggering fall from grace” for Sports Illustrated. They say that in the past SI “won numerous National Magazine Awards for its sports journalism and published work by literary giants ranging from William Faulkner to John Updike.”
The article continues:
But now that it’s under the management of The Arena Group, parts of the magazine seem to have devolved into a Potemkin Village in which phony writers are cooked up out of thin air, outfitted with equally bogus biographies and expertise to win readers’ trust, and used to pump out AI-generated buying guides that are monetized by affiliate links to products that provide a financial kickback when readers click them.
The Arena Group claims that this scandal has nothing to do with the firings of 3 major executives. However, that seems unlikely.
These AI ‘Writers’ Disappear and Reappear At Random
Another strike against Advon and The Arena Group is that their supposedly real writers, whose only online presence can be tracked to an AI-generated headshot site, disappear, reappear, and seem interchangeable.
Another example of this is another non-existent SI writer, Sora Tanaka. Her profile as a writer on the Sports Illustrated site looked like this:
And here is the exact same image found on the same AI-generated headshot site.
This summer, Futurism found that Andrew Ortiz disappeared from the SI site entirely. Instead, his profile page suddenly redirected to Sora Tanaka’s.
There are no online records of Tanaka at all. However, her headshot is available on the same site listed as “joyful asian young-adult female with long brown hair and brown eyes.”
Tanaka was eventually replaced as well. However, the weird thing is that every time one of these AI authors was scrubbed from the site, all of the articles under their name would suddenly be attributed to a new AI author with no explanation.
There was never any disclosure that these articles were not written by real people. Eventually, there was a disclaimer that these articles were written by a third party and not the editorial staff of SI, but is that enough?
The Arena Group Allegedly Uses Secretly AI-Generated Content Across Their Companies
While a lot of the AI-generated content from SI was removed after Futurism asked about it, this seems like it might allegedly be a widespread practice amongst companies owned by The Arena Group.
Remember, The Arena Group does not just own Sports Illustrated, but over 200 other media companies. And according to Futurism’s investigation, they are doing similar things at TheStreet, the financial publication they own.
Futurism says:
We found authors at TheStreet with highly specific biographies detailing seemingly flesh-and-blood humans with specific areas of expertise — but with profile photos traceable to that same AI face website. And like at Sports Illustrated, these fake writers are periodically wiped from existence and their articles reattributed to new names, with no disclosure about the use of AI.
They also say that for TheStreet, the attempts to remove and shuffle the AI-generated writers and their content are sloppy, making it easier to notice.
They still have AI-generated profiles displayed, even though the articles by those writers have long since been wiped from the site.
All of those supposedly real writers can only be found on the same AI-generated headshot site. You can also see the same poor-quality writing in many of these articles.
While, when it comes to sports or buying volleyballs, it likely doesn’t seem that high stakes if AI authors write awkward-sounding articles about these topics.
AI-Generated Health and Financial Advice
The stakes get higher when algorithms without human oversight are giving financial and health advice, like they are on The Arena Group-owned publications TheStreet and Men’s Journal.
Here is an excerpt from the deleted TheStreet article “How To Improve Your Financial Status” written by the likely AI-generated writer Nicole Merrifield.
Your financial status translates to your value in society. It not only helps you lead a better life but also creates an impactful image. People with strong financial status are revered and given special advantages everywhere around the world. You may be earning a handsome amount or be well-to-do, but if you don’t have a strong financial standing, you are missing out on a lot of benefits from society.
This, again, does not seem like a human being wrote it. Even weirder is her likely AI-generated bio, which has nothing to do with financial advice or expertise at all.
Nicole is a first-grade teacher who entered the field of education for one simple reason: she loves helping people. True satisfaction for Nicole comes when her students demonstrate improvements due to her teaching, and she hopes her input will help educators around the world enhance their classrooms.
Why would a first-grade teacher whose goal is to educate children and help educators be writing articles about growing your wealth to improve your social status?
Final Thoughts on the Sports Illustrated AI Scandal
Another added layer to the controversy is that SI has been laying off a lot of employees over the last few years. So, many are angered to find out that they have been firing photographers, writers, and other staffers, only to secretly replace people with AI-generated content from a third party.
Many have feared that AI will lead to widespread poverty, as companies try to cut corners by replacing all or most of their staff with AI.
There are also concerns when it comes to ethics in journalism. Bylines exist for a reason, so readers know where their information is coming from and real people can be held to high standards.
People should know if the health/financial/news information they are getting has been churned out randomly by an algorithm. Intentionally tricking readers to save money instead of informing them is not what news organizations are supposed to do.
What do you think? Comment below.
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