Facepalm: Beware of trying to pass off AI-generated articles as being from real writers. Weeks after Sports Illustrated was discovered to contain copy reportedly written by artificial intelligence, which included fake author names and AI-created images, Ross Levinsohn, CEO of the magazine's publisher, The Arena Group, has been fired.
The Arena Group, whose brands include TheStreet, Parade, and Men's Journal, announced that the board of directors terminated the employment of its CEO Ross Levinsohn, and named Manoj Bhargava as interim Chief Executive Officer.
Levinsohn is the latest Arena Group casualty. The company fired operations president and COO Andrew Kraft, media president Rob Barrett, and corporate counsel Julie Fenster last week.
The Arena Group said the layoffs were made to improve the operational efficiency and revenue of the company. There's no mention of the Sports Illustrated AI scandal, but it almost certainly played a part.
In November, Futurism uncovered a series of fake profiles from 'writers' whose articles appeared in Sports Illustrated and elsewhere. These included Drew Ortiz, whose biography claimed he loved the outdoors and being at his parents' farm. He sounds very active for someone whose photo appears on an AI-generated headshot website: Drew seemed to only exist within Sports Illustrated.
There was also product reviewer and fitness guru Sora Tanaka, another writer with a headshot from the same AI website and with no work or social media presence outside of Sports Illustrated. Futurism found similar cases of fake writers at TheStreet.
The Arena Group denied the accusation that the articles were AI-generated. It said the items were sourced from third-party advertising company AdVon Commerce.
"Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate," Arena Group said at the time. "AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans."
Arena Group added that AdVon had admitted to some writers using a pen name or pseudonym in certain articles to protect author privacy. The company said it was cutting ties with AdVon and that it was removing its content from Arena Group websites while it investigated.
Whether the articles really were written by a human is debatable. Here is an extract from the Ortiz piece: "Volleyball is one of the most popular sports in the world, and for good reason. It's fast-paced, has a high skill ceiling, and is generally an exciting sport to both play and watch. Even people who don't watch sports can easily understand the intensity and skill required to play volleyball whenever they watch clips. There's a reason why it's been such a mainstay in modern sports to this day." Hmm…
