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Staff Writer: Olivia Beaudette

Email: obeaudette@umassd.edu 

Sports Illustrated is facing backlash after the discovery of AI-generated articles and the use of non-existent authors with fake profile images.

The company released product reviews written by authors that appear to be fake. 

The first red flag was an author biography for writer Drew Ortiz. After researching the writer, it is apparent that he doesn’t exist. Ortiz has no social media presence and no publishing history. 

Not only does he have no presence outside of the biography, but his profile picture can be purchased on a website that uses AI to generate headshots. His picture is described as a “neutral white-young adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes.”

Over the summer, Ortiz’s profile was gone, but his profile page was redirected to a profile for a different writer named Sora Tanaka. The picture used for this profile could also be bought on the same website that Drew Ortiz’s image came from. 

After some time, Sora’s profile disappeared and was replaced by a new profile with no picture. Every time these profiles were taken down and replaced, the articles attached to the “writers” would just be transferred to the new writer as if these new profiles wrote them.

Not only are the writers being generated by AI, but the articles themselves are, too. Sports Illustrated never left any disclaimers about the articles being AI-generated. They only said their content was written by a “third party.”

This third party is a company called AdVon Commerce.

The Arena Group manages the Sports Illustrated site’s publishing. They allowed the articles and writers to be published by AdVon on the Sports Illustrated Site. The Arena Group also owns TheStreet. 

Much like Sports Illustrated, the authors’ biographies have many details that seem real, but the profile pictures can also be found on the same AI site as Drew Ortiz and Sora Tanaka. They follow the same pattern of erasing the writers and reassigning the articles to the new writers.

Futurism reached out to Sports Illustrated after this information came to light. Sports Illustrated denied that their articles were AI-generated. However, an anonymous source who works for Sports Illustrated confirmed that the photos and reports were AI-generated. 

Sports Illustrated continued to deny the allegations about AI generation. In their article, Futurism refers to a specific seemingly AI-written piece by Drew Ortiz due to its inhuman-like language.

One of the sentences in this article that led people to suspect it was AI-generated was, “Volleyball can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with.”

When Futurism reached out to Sports Illustrated, they eliminated all the AI-generated writers. 

After Futurism released its article, Sports Illustrated released a statement on X stating, “AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans.” 

AdVon Commerce stated that their articles are written and edited by humans, but they are published by authors who use fake names to protect their privacy.

After AdVon admitted to having fake names, they ended their partnership with AdVon and removed any content they published.

The Sports Illustrated Union also released a statement on X stating they “are horrified by a story on the site Futurism” and “demand answers and transparency from Arena Group management about what exactly has been published under the SI name.”

This response was also signed by “The Humans of the SI Union,” so it appears there is a lot of controversy around the management strategies of The Arena Group. 

Based on this statement, Sports Illustrated oversaw publishing these AI articles, but their parent company allowed these articles and writers to be published on their site.

Other parent companies like Red Ventures also publish AI-generated content that has been exposed to the public. With the continuous growth of AI, readers need to look out for big companies using third-party sources to produce content.