Sports Illustrated publisher fires its CEO following scandal over AI-generated articles

Facepalm: Beware of looking to skip off AI-generated articles as being from real writers. Weeks after Sports Illustrated was found to comprise articles reportedly written with the aid of synthetic intelligence, which included fake writer names and AI-created pix, writer The Arena Group has fired its CEO.

The Arena Group, whose brands encompass The Street, Parade, and Men's Journal, introduced that the board of directors terminated the employment of CEO Ross Levinsohn, and named Manoj Bhargava as meantime Chief Executive Officer.

Levinsohn is the present day Arena Group casualty. The enterprise fired operations president and COO Andrew Kraft, media president Rob Barrett, and company suggest Julie Fenster final week.

The Arena Group stated the layoffs have been made to improve the operational performance and sales of the business enterprise. There's no point out of the AI scandal, however it nearly clearly played a component.

In November, Futurism exposed a chain of fake profiles from 'writers' whose articles seemed in Sports Illustrated and some other place. These included Drew Ortiz, whose biography claimed he cherished the outdoors and being at his dad and mom' farm. He sounds very energetic for a person whose photo seems on an AI-generated headshot internet site: Drew appeared to simplest exist within Sports Illustrated.

Drew has the identical lifeless eyes and expressionless face as any ordinary human man or woman

There become additionally product reviewer and health guru Sora Tanaka, any other creator with a headshot from the same AI internet site and with out a work or social media presence out of doors of Sports Illustrated. Futurism observed similar instances of fake writers at The Street.

The Arena Group denied the accusation that the articles had been AI-generated. It said the items were sourced from third-party marketing employer AdVon Commerce.

"Today, an editorial was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. According to our initial investigation, this isn't correct," Arena Group stated at the time. "AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question have been written and edited by people."

Arena Group added that AdVon had admitted to some writers the usage of a pen or pseudonym in sure articles to defend author privateness. The company said it turned into cutting ties with AdVon and that it was removing its content from Arena Group web sites at the same time as it investigated.

Whether the articles definitely had been written with the aid of a human is controversial. Here is an extract from the Ortiz piece: "Volleyball is one of the maximum popular sports inside the global, and for suitable reason. It's rapid-paced, has a excessive talent ceiling, and is commonly an exciting recreation to both play and watch. Even folks that do not watch sports activities can easily apprehend the intensity and ability required to play volleyball whenever they watch clips. There's a purpose why it's been any such mainstay in present day sports activities to these days." Hmm…

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