In a story that has generated both shock and disdain, Futurism’s Maggie Harrison reports that Sports Illustrated published stories that were produced or partially produced by artificial intelligence, and that some stories had bylines of fake authors. To be clear, the disdain was directed at Sports Illustrated.
But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by any of this, as I’ll explain in a moment. First, the details.
When asked about fake authors, an anonymous source described as a “person involved with the creation of the content” told Harrison, “There’s a lot. 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. It’s just crazy.”
The fake authors even included AI-generated mugshots. If true, that is pretty gross — photos of authors who don’t actually exist, to go along with made-up bios that included made-up hobbies and even made-up pets.
Another source told Harrison, “The content is absolutely AI-generated, no matter how much they say that it’s not.”
Harrison wrote that after reaching out to Sports Illustrated’s publisher, The Arena Group, the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated’s site without explanation.
Harrison wrote that none of the stories that appeared to be generated by AI with fake authors “contained any disclosure about the use of AI or that the writer wasn’t real, though they did eventually gain a disclaimer explaining that the content was ‘created by a 3rd party,’ and that the ‘Sports Illustrated editorial staff are not involved in the creation of this content.’”
It actually gets even worse, if you can imagine. Harrison wrote that sometimes an author’s name was removed and replaced with another fake author. Harrison wrote, “Each time an author was switched out, the posts they supposedly penned would be reattributed to the new persona, with no editor’s note explaining the change in byline.”
The stories in question do not appear to be the traditional sports features we’re all familiar with when it comes to Sports Illustrated. The stories were more along the lines of product features and reviews. For example, one story from 2022 was about the best volleyballs.
Not that it makes any difference.
The Sports Illustrated Union put out a statement saying it was “horrified” by the details in the Futurism story. It went on to say, “If true, these practices violate everything we believe in about journalism. We deplore being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers.”
The union went on to call for “answers and transparency” from The Arena Group, adding, “We demand the company commit to adhering to basic journalistic standards, including not publishing computer-written stories by fake people.”
It also said, “What is described in this Futurism story does not represent the hardworking journalists who make up the SI Union.”
It was signed by “The Humans of the SI Union.”
Then, late in the day on Monday, a spokesperson for The Arena Group put out 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 strongly condemn – and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership.
The Arena Group has operated Sports Illustrated since 2019.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Rosenberg tweeted earlier in the day, “Our staff works so hard to carry on Sports Illustrated’s tradition of great journalism. It’s so disappointing when people* in our own company undermine our work.”
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So now to the part where we shouldn’t be surprised.
Back in February, The Wall Street Journal’s Alexandra Bruell wrote a story with the headline, “Sports Illustrated Publisher Taps AI to Generate Articles, Story Ideas.”
Bruell wrote that The Arena Group, which also publishes Men’s Journal, TheStreet and Dealbreaker, was using AI to generate stories that pull information from its own library of content.
Bruell wrote, “Some articles in Men’s Journal are already AI-generated, the company said, such as ‘Proven Tips to Help You Run Your Fastest Mile Yet,’ and ‘The Best Ways for Men Over 40 to Maintain Muscle.’ The articles were created based on information from 17 years of archived stories from Men’s Fitness, a brand that exists under Men’s Journal.”
Those stories included a disclaimer that said they used “deep-learning tools for retrieval combined with OpenAI’s large language model for various stages of the workflow.” They also said, “This article was reviewed and fact-checked by our editorial team.”
Bruell wrote at the time, “Arena Group said it isn’t looking to replace journalists. Rather, the goal is to support content workflows, video creation, newsletters, sponsored content and marketing campaigns.”
None of this makes it right. But the point is we should’ve seen this all coming.
And yet Monday’s Futurism story has again unsettled journalists concerned about AI-created content, especially when you see a name such as Sports Illustrated involved. Earlier this year, Gannett paused using AI-generated content for some high school sports stories. (It’s the second item in my newsletter from Aug. 29.)
Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod wrote, “As AI technology becomes increasingly more prominent, it’s likely only a matter of time until it’s an accepted part of the sports media experience. Thus far, however, the use of AI in the industry has predominantly been premature and only resulted in embarrassment for well-established brands. That now includes Sports Illustrated, which has seen no shortage of controversies since it was purchased by Authentic Brands Group and licensed to The Arena Group (formerly Maven) in 2019. It’s hard to imagine that the use of AI-generated content will do anything but continue to damage an already diminished trust from its audience.”
In a strongly worded statement on X, former Sports Illustrated writer Jeff Pearlman wrote, “It sucks,” and mentioned some of the legends that built Sports Illustrated into an elite publication: Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins, Richard Hoffer and Steve Rushin.
“But this is what we’ve done,” Pearlman continued, “with the continued corporatization of media. These companies don’t care about content. At all. It’s entirely clicks and ads and ads and clicks. That’s it, that’s all. I’m not particularly sad, because the Sports Illustrated I loved and worked for … 52 issues a year, 5,000-word pieces, a devotion to craftsmanship, detail, heart and love … is long gone. It just is. This isn’t Sports Illustrated. It’s some bull (expletive) company picking off the last pieces of rotted fat from the carcass of something that was truly great.”
The book on Trump
Donald Trump, shown here on Nov. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
Few if any journalists have covered Donald Trump more intently than The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Aside from covering Trump for the Times, Haberman wrote a best-selling book about him called “Confidence Man,” and Swan conducted one of the most famous interviews with Trump on HBO, back when Swan was with Axios.
Now the two plan to write a book about what figures to be Trump’s final act — whatever that may be. While what figures to be the definitive book on Trump won’t be published until far in the future, there was already an intense bidding war among publishers.
Already, though, Axios’ Mike Allen reports that Simon and Schuster won out and will publish the book. Allen wrote, “The duo’s untitled Trump project aims to be more enduring than a campaign book — with plenty of juicy inside-the-room detail, but also the larger story of this singular figure in global affairs and public life for the past decade. And, of course, it’ll likely be part courtroom drama.”
Hearst Connecticut expands
For this item, I turn it over to Poynter media business analyst Rick Edmonds.
Hearst expanded its considerable presence in Connecticut Monday with a tentative agreement to buy the Record-Journal of Meriden. Hearst Connecticut Media Group has been growing by acquisition every couple of years since 2007. It now has 16 websites and eight dailies, including the Stamford Advocate, Connecticut Post (of Bridgeport) and New Haven Register. The group has also established a presence in Hartford, home to MediaNews Group’s Hartford Courant.
Editor-in-chief Wendy Metcalfe emailed me that the group is nearing a goal of 100,000 paid print and digital subscribers. It has more than 150 journalists and will increase that when the deal closes, Metcalfe said. The concentrated presence allows for centralized pagination, sports coverage and ad sales.
On the seller side, the Record-Journal and its weeklies are a fifth-generation family-owned organization. For several years now, family groups have been selling upstream where economies of scale control the costs of a transition to a digital focus.
Scary stuff
Esquire contributing reporter Chris Heath has a new piece out: “In the War Room with Steve Bannon”
Here’s the opening about one of Trump’s key advisers:
“Donald Trump won the 2020 election,” Steve Bannon pronounces. “Of that there is not even a question.”
Obviously you expect me not to agree with you, I say.
“Of course I expect you not to agree with me,” he says. “And I’m also not looking for you to agree with me. And I also don’t give a (expletive) who in the mainstream media agrees or disagrees with me.”
And so off we go — about this and about COVID (the Bannon view: “It’s 100 percent a bioweapon — [expletive] not even a question”) and about vaccines (“I would never in ten million years get this vaccine,” Bannon says, and asks if I would; I simply hand him my vax card, which he looks at with apparent amazement: “I’ve never …”) and about what I view — but naturally Bannon doesn’t — as his incessant anti-Semitic dog-whistling. At one point, he rhapsodizes about the range of information available to people these days.
Or misinformation, I say.
“A wide range of information,” he counters. “One man’s misinformation may be somebody else’s Holy Grail, right?”
I hardly agree — this seems a terrifying equivalence to me — but he’s already on to something else.
You need to read the rest. It’s some scary stuff. Which is why you need to read it.
Politician of the year?
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., speaks at the Republican Party of Florida Freedom Summit on Nov. 4, in Kissimmee, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
Fox News political contributor Juan Williams, who used to be a co-host of Fox News’ “The Five,” wrote a column for The Hill about his 2023 politician of the year: Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz.
Williams didn’t mean it as a compliment. Williams wrote, “Gaetz deserves a place in history. He is a living monument to an era of elected Republican officials with no interest in governing.”
Williams noted how Gaetz was a driving force behind Kevin McCarthy needing forever — actually 15 votes — to be elected speaker of the House. And how the government screeched to a halt for three weeks in October after McCarthy was removed as speaker.
Williams wrote, “Gaetz takes the prize, for successfully paralyzing the House for the entire year. With his hands on the wheel and driving toward revenge and chaos — all to raise his personal profile and stir up small, online donations — Gaetz crashed the House of Representatives in a ditch on a low road. As a result of his tactics, the people’s House, one of the world’s great democratic institutions, is now commonly derided by citizens on the left and right as a clown show.”
Moving up to the big leagues
Everyone wants a career in baseball, right? Even media executives, it would seem.
M. Scott Havens is leaving his job as CEO of Bloomberg Media to become president of business operations for the New York Mets. Havens was promoted to the CEO role at Bloomberg Media in January 2022 when Justin Smith left to help launch Semafor, a global news startup.
Havens’ role with the Mets will be on the business side of things, not the actual baseball side.
Michael Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg Media, wrote in a memo that CFO and COO Karen Saltser will become interim CEO.
Media tidbits
- This story might infuriate you, but you should read it. Robert Samuels in The New Yorker: “When your own book gets caught up in the censorship wars.” As a preview, Samuels put out this tweet about his story: “When I asked why our book was banned, the school district said they did not even read it. They did it preemptively. In this essay, I detail the heartbreaking, eye opening experience of your work being kept away from students. Please check it out.” The book that Samuels wrote and was banned was “His Name Is George Floyd.” It won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year.
- Not sure I agree with this, but it’s worth the read. The Washington Post’s editorial board with “Schools should ban smartphones. Parents should help.”
- For Poynter, Brittany Shaughnessy with “2020 election coverage was rife with authoritarian language, study finds.”
- The Verge’s Emma Roth with “After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine.”
- Tweet of the day from journalist and podcaster Jemele Hill: “Support your local newspaper today. A lot of them have Black Friday subscription deals. Journalism costs money and the majority of journalists are working class. One-third of newspapers already have been lost and over 17,000 media jobs have been cut this year alone. Freedom of the press is an essential piece to democracy, especially local journalism.”
- Kevin Ponniah has been named BBC News’ head of digital news for North America. He will be responsible for all U.S. and Canadian digital news reporting across BBC platforms. Ponniah, who had been a senior news editor, will work out of Washington, D.C.
- CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert announced on Instagram on Monday that this week’s tapings of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” have been canceled. Colbert wrote, “Sorry to say that I have to cancel our shows this week. I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Turkey overdose, Steve? Gravy boat capsize?’ Actually, I’m recovering from surgery for a ruptured appendix. I’m grateful to my doctors for their care and to Evie and the kids for putting up with me. Going forward, all emails to my appendix will be handled by my pancreas.”
- For New Jersey Monthly, Tom Wilk writes about the first reporter’s notebook he ever had in, “Local Journalist Finds His First Reporter’s Notebook — and a Passageway to the Past.”
Hot type
- I couldn’t read this story fast enough. For Slate, Grace Glassman with “The Train Wrecked in Slow Motion. I gave birth at 45. It was a miracle that almost cost me everything.”
- I used to like Sopan Deb’s writing for The New York Times when he covered the NBA. But now he’s on to other things. His latest is a fun piece: “Nom Nom Nom. What’s the Deal With Cookie Monster’s Cookies?”
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