AI Article Controversy Results In Sports Illustrated CEO Losing His Job

There's a shakeup at the top of Sports Illustrated. The storied magazine has abruptly fired CEO Ross Levinsohn, replacing him with Manoj Bhargava of 5-Hour Energy fame. While the company didn't explain the reason for the firing, it no doubt has something to do with the recently revealed use of AI content on the Sports Illustrated website.

Sports Illustrated found itself in hot water a few weeks back when Futurism ran a story on its apparent use of AI-generated content. The articles were dressed up as buying guides and reviews, but they were actually machine-generated text aimed at convincing people to click on affiliate links.

The supposed authors of the articles weren't even real people—Futurism found their headshots available for sale on a site that sells AI-generated profile photos. Sports Illustrated would even swap out the fake AI authors on occasion. There was no disclaimer that the content was AI-generated, and it was all purged from the site after Futurism published its exposè.

Sports Illustrated is part of The Arena Group, a publishing firm that owns Sports Illustrated, The Street, and other brands. The company didn't specify why Levinsohn was shown the door, but the unconvincing response to allegations of shady AI content probably didn't help. At the time, SI claimed this was all third-party content from AdVon Commerce and it was assured that all the words were written by humans. But which humans? Sports Illustrated unconvincingly claimed that AdVon allowed writers to use pen names for "privacy." Even if AdVon thought it was selling the work of humans, bargain basement commerce content that isn't even worthy of having a credited author is almost certainly being secretly produced by AI in 2023.

Maybe that's all true, but it sounds extremely unlikely—the use of AI personas, outsourced commerce content, and abrupt deletion of all the AdVon articles certainly points to guilt. Levinsohn is only the latest head to roll in recent days. Last week, The Arena Group fired chief operating officer Andrew Kraft, media president Rob Barrett, and corporate counsel Julie Fenster.

Advances in generative AI over the past year have made it harder to trust what you read. These large language models are capable of pumping out unimaginative, often incorrect text about any topic. It might be bad content, but it costs next to nothing. It's unlikely a media conglomerate is going to can an executive over saving money in 2023. But getting caught? That's unforgivable.