Website Futurism reported on Monday that SI, the glossy magazine that for decades was the gold standard for sports journalism, had generated consumer product reviews from artificial intelligence and had faked the stories written by fake writers. One author’s profile photo was available for purchase on an AI website, Futurism reported.
SI retracted the stories, but its parent company, Arena Group, a media conglomerate that also owns Men’s Journal and Parade, disputed Futurism’s report. In a statement on Monday, Arena said the articles were written by people for AdVon Commerce, a third-party company it had hired to produce e-commerce content. Only the authors’ names and bios were generated by artificial intelligence, Arena said.
By then, the jokes had already begun. Pat McAfee devoted a segment to the story on his ESPN show. “Sports Illustrated says, ‘We can’t hire anybody. We have no money,” he said. “But what if we have 10 more writers? Think with me. Who are they? AI Writers!’ The reporters said some of their sources jokingly asked if the reporters were actually real people.
On Tuesday, during a meeting described as “peaceful” and “tense” by two attendees, officials demanded a full, transparent record of what happened. The meeting was hosted by editor-in-chief Steve Cannella and top executive Ross Levinsohn joined 40 minutes after it began, the people said.
Answers to questions Tuesday about the AI debacle, several executives said, were unsatisfactory and incomplete. Executives said they were once mistaken for an AI company and had already severed their relationship with AdVon before the Futurism story was published. But employees believed that higher-ups were shirking responsibility by blaming AdVon, just as Levinsohn had done in an email sent to employees Monday afternoon.
“The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed by an external third-party company,” Levinsohn wrote. “AdVon assured us that all articles in question were written and edited by humans.”
Levinsohn and AdVon did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Questions about artificial intelligence preoccupy journalism—how it will be used, the ethics behind it, and what human work it might eventually replace. At SI, the focus of executive outrage was less existential—product reviews are not sports journalism—and more about yet another embarrassment they said undermined their journalism.
This, after all, is the same magazine he was in as a high school student was found covering the Cincinnati Bengals for SI’s network of affiliate sitespart of a strategy by former SI chief executive James Heckman to produce content from cheaper writers — not to mention several rounds of layoffs and SI Brand Brain Pills trading under the name of the magazine.
This kind of undermining of the brand overshadows the good journalism he still does, believe the staff, including a recent scoop on former Michigan football analyst Connor Stallions by Richard Johnson and Tom Verducci’s baseball coverage.
The root cause of the despair is a business model that staff fear is broken beyond repair. Arena Group pays $15 million a year for the rights to publish SI, in print and online, to a licensing company called Authentic Brands Group, which bought SI from its previous owner, magazine publisher Meredith. (More than 30 percent of the staff was laid off as part of this deal.)
Authentic Brands Group retained commercial licensing rights to SI, which they use for things like the new Sports Illustrated Resorts. The Arena Group, meanwhile, kicks $15 million annually into its SI budget and must generate most of its revenue from subscriptions and advertising, according to people familiar with the deal. Even documentary, audio and script TV license rights are controlled by Authentic Brands Group.
This may explain the need for more content, however it is created.
Executives have also questioned new article production goals, although they vary by author. But many executives called them draconian and said they don’t properly distinguish between a daily story and a deeply reported investigation. (“It’s like judging a baseball player by how many times he swings,” said one reporter.)
Earlier this year, Levinsohn told employees that Arena Group owed tens of millions of dollars in a debt payment that was overdue, which employees worried could threaten the magazine’s viability, two staffers said. That disaster was averted with a new investment from 5-Hour Energy founder Manoj Bhargava, according to these executives.
This isn’t the first time a media company has run into trouble over allegedly AI-generated reviews from AdVon. In October, employees of e-commerce site USA Today noticed reviews that appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence and were posted under fake bylines displayed on their site.
Like Sports Illustrated, USA Today owner Gannett claimed the publications were not generated by AI. Instead, a spokeswoman insisted the fake names were pseudonyms for people who wrote the articles under contract with AdVon.
AdVon is public about its use of AI. One of its social media pages said the company used “artificial intelligence solutions for e-commerce,” while one of the writers who produced articles for Gannett in USA Today cited his expertise as “polishing AI-generated text” in his LinkedIn page.