Sports Illustrated CEO fired after AI-written articles were published under fake author bios

The Arena Group, the publisher of Sports Illustrated, has fired its CEO Ross Levinsohn weeks after the magazine came under fire over an AI scandal.

The magazine was hit with allegations last month after a report by Futurism accused Sports Illustrated of publishing articles under fake, AI-generated author profiles.

The Arena Group’s board announced that they were firing Mr Levinsohn as CEO a week after they let go of other company leaders such as operations president and chief operating officer Andrew Kraft, media president Rob Barrett and corporate counsel Julie Fenster.

However, the release did not mention the AI scandal; instead, it claimed their decision was made to “improve the operational efficiency of the company.”

Manoj Bhargava, a businessman and CEO of Living Essentials, best known for manufacturing the 5-hour Energy drink, has replaced Mr Levinsohn in the role.

Sports Illustrated found itself in trouble after Futurism, a science and technology outlet, reported that some of the magazine’s author biographies did not relate to anyone real.

Drew Oritz, for example, said in his biography that he “has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature. Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn’t out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents’ farm."

Yet outside of Sports Illustrated, there were no traces of Drew Oritz to be found.

Better yet, Drew’s profile photo is up for sale on a website that provides AI-generated images, which describes the picture as a "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes,” Futurism’s report found.

The report also claimed that Drew’s articles sounded “like it was written by an alien,” suspecting that the articles were also created by AI as well.

However, Sports Illustrated responded to these claims on X, and said that the allegations that articles were created by AI were “not accurate.”

Their statement blamed a third-party company, AdVon Commerce, which the magazine partnered with to write product reviews and e-commerce articles and have since ended their partnership with them.

“A number of AdVon’s e-commerce articles ran on certain Arena websites,” the statement read.

“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,” it continued.

“However, we have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy – actions we strongly condemn – and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues.”

The Sports Illustrated Union also chimed in regarding Futurism’s findings and took to X to say they were “horrified” that The Arena Group has published AI-generated content.

Mr Levinsohn took over as Sports Illustrated CEO in 2019 before becoming CEO of The Arena Group in 2020.

In February, after a spurt of layoffs at the company, Mr Levinsohn alluded that Sports Illustrated would start incorporating AI into its journalism but would never replace journalism altogether.

“While AI will never replace journalism, reporting, or crafting and editing a story, rapidly improving AI technologies can create enterprise value for our brands and partners,” Mr Levinsohn said earlier this year.