Sports Illustrated has found itself in hot water lately, after it was revealed that they’ve been using AI-generated articles and profile pictures to create fake authors. The articles in question were published under the names of non-existent writers, and their profile pictures were generated using AI.
The revelation came to light after a report by the website Futurism, which found that several articles on the Sports Illustrated website had been written in a style that was eerily similar to AI-generated text. Additionally, the profile pictures of the authors were found to be identical to images that could be purchased from websites that sell AI-generated stock photos.
One of the authors in question is Drew Ortiz, who is described as an outdoor lover on his profile on the website, where he has no publishing history or any social media presence whatsoever. Additionally, Drew’s profile photo was traced back to a website that sells AI-generated headshots.
“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.”
Futurism were the first to report about the AI-generated fake writers, and reported that there were more and other fake authors that recently ‘published’ articles on Sports Illustrated:
“There’s a lot,” they told us of the fake authors. “I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist.”
“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,” they continued. “It’s just crazy.”
In the meantime, after being confronted with, and asked about the alleged fake authors, the magazine deleted all of the articles in question.
This Sports Illustrated story is wild.
The TLDR is that they bought AI-generated headshots and created fake writer profiles so they could publish AI-generated content and make it look real.
They then deleted the content when asked about it.
Super sad. SI used to be the best. https://t.co/xgDDtxP9PD pic.twitter.com/Wkq618VFxQ
— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) November 27, 2023
