Sports Illustrated responds to accusations it published AI-generated content

Sports Illustrated responded to a report alleging it published AI-generated content, denying the claims but acknowledging that some articles were published under fabricated names.

A spokesperson for The Arena Group, the magazine’s publisher, said the articles in question were licensed from a third-party company, AdVon Commerce, which “has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans.”

Some of the stories, however, were published by authors who used a “pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy.”

The spokesperson said “we strongly condemn” these actions and that the group has since ended its partnership with AdVon. The Arena Group also said it was removing all of the content from AdVon online.

“Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate,” the statement began. “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.”

The issue was first brought to public attention after Futurism published a report that documented some of the author pages on Sports Illustrated’s website represented people who did not seem to exist outside of the magazine’s website. At least one of the headshots used was also for sale on a website that sold AI-generated headshots.

The Futurism reporting, however, also claimed that some of the authors’ writing “often sound like it was written by an alien.” The article provided an example of a story that warned that volleyball “can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with.”