Sports Illustrated, a publication that has achieved considerable popularity in the sports world, has published articles attributed to fake writers created by artificial intelligence, Futurism reports. Writers included “Drew Ortiz,” who “spends most of his life outdoors,” and “Sora Tanaka,” who “is a fitness guru and loves trying different foods and drinks.”
Futurism found that headshots of the relevant author were offered for sale on an AI-generated image website, and someone involved in creating the content told the publication that there were “a large number” of similar fake authors. Rachael Fink, spokeswoman for The Arena Group, which publishes Sports Illustrated, opposed the claim that the stories were created by artificial intelligence.
After Futurism contacted Arena Group, the fake writers disappeared. Additionally, articles signed by AI-generated authors included a disclaimer: “This content was created by a 3rd party” and “Sports Illustrated’s editorial staff was not involved in the creation of this content” forms part of this statement.
Similarly, in October, a similar disclaimer appeared on articles published by Reviewed, publisher Gannett’s consumer review site. In this case, employees on the site openly accused their employers of publishing artificial intelligence-generated content. Gannett spokeswoman Lark-Marie Anton told The Verge at the time that a third-party firm produced the stories and that Gannett confirmed the material was not generated by AI.
But AI or not, there appears to be a single company behind the strange articles in the Review and Sports Illustrated.
According to the disclaimer in these stories, a company called AdVon Commerce produced the maybe AI, maybe not AI reviews for Gannett. Gannett wrote that it has partnered with a company called ASR Group Holdings, which is the other name used by AdVon Commerce. AdVon describes itself on LinkedIn as a company that offers “ML/AI solutions for E-Commerce.”
Contacted by The Verge, Arena Group spokesperson Fink confirmed that AdVon was working on the articles and assured them that all articles were written and edited by humans.
“However, we learned that AdVon enabled authors to use pseudonyms or pseudonyms on some articles to protect authors’ privacy — actions we condone — and we have been removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since We ended the partnership.”
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