‘FAKE DESCRIPTION’

‘Sports Illustrated’ Reportedly Used AI-Generated Authors

When Futurism contacted the magazine’s publisher, all the AI authors were deleted from the magazine’s website without comment.

Sports Illustrated has published numerous articles by AI authors without disclosing it, according to two people involved in content creation at the sports magazine. “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,” one source told Futurism. The technology news site found that AI-generated writers were regularly replaced with new ones and their profile pictures were listed for sale on online AI headshot shops. Initially, the articles did not state that they were produced with the help of AI or that the credited writers weren’t real, but the magazine later described the stories as “created by a third party” and disclosed that “Sports Illustrated editorial staff are not involved in the creation of this content.” When Futurism contacted the magazine’s publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI authors were deleted from Sports Illustrated’s website without comment. The SI Union wrote in a response on Monday afternoon that the practices detailed in the report “violate everything we believe in about journalism” and called for “transparency from Arena Group management.”