Findings from Futurism suggest Sports Illustrated has been publishing AI-generated content and disguising it by including bylines and photos for authors that don’t exist.

The report, published Tuesday, revealed that a number of headshots from SI’s authors could be found on a website used to buy AI-generated headshots. Futurism continued digging for answers but found no evidence the writers in question actually existed outside of SI’s website.

Additionally, clicking on the names would open author pages complete with biographies and lists of hobbies.

[SI’s parent company Arena responded, via Townhall, that this was an issue with a third party vendor. — Ed]

“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 statement continued, “AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans. According to AdVon, their writers, editors, and researchers create and curate content and follow a policy that involves using both counter-plagiarism and counter-AI software on all content. However, we have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy – actions we don’t condone – and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership.”

[Even if one accepts this explanation, it’s not sufficient. Did SI disclose that it was getting its content from AdVon? And why would they allow author bios for AdVon content, especially if AdVon was then deleting and changing them around? It’s one thing to use AI-generated content if you’re honest about disclosing that. It’s another level of deception entirely to create fake reporters and pass them off as the real thing. Why would anyone trust SI’s reporting on anything after this? — Ed]