Sports Illustrated caught using fake AI author. There's a lot of people who just want to submit an article and be paid for it. You know, real journalists. Tell you what's going on. Sports Illustrated reportedly created fake authors for [00:00:16] AI generated articles okay? Complete with phony headshots and BIOS. Yep, what are we looking at here? Findings from Futurism suggest Sports Illustrated has been publishing [00:00:32] AI generated content and disguising it by including bylines and photos for authors that do not exist. Now, can you imagine? I'm in the Sports Illustrated Newsroom, and I say, hey, Mondel, did you see our colleague's article? [00:00:49] What office is he working out of? Or, he's remote. I want to call him and tell him how great his article was. Is he in the company directory? This is dark. It's kind of crazy if true. Report published Tuesday revealed that a number of headshots from SI's authors [00:01:08] 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. Medialike with the details. It's like a tree falls in the forest. [00:01:26] And if nobody heard it, do these people exist or are they, that's a whole another thing. This is very shady. Very shady. [00:01:41] Additionally, clicking on the names would open author pages, complete with biographies and a list of hobbies. Now you're doing too much. You are doing too much, okay? I've done stories before Mayor where someone has faked a pregnancy for [00:01:59] the entire time. Their partner. They live with their partner, desperate for a baby. Then they get more desperate as the due date nears and they need to go swipe a baby. The lie keeps growing and growing. [00:02:15] There's a whole biography, a list of hobbies. Wonder what the hobbies were, cheating and lying on the weekend. A writer by the name of Drew Ortiz, good looking fella, for example, was described as enjoying camping, hiking, and [00:02:34] being back on his parents' farm. His headshot, however, was easily found on a website with the description neutral white, young adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes. [00:02:49] Couldn't you just go to Duke University and say, you got good writers here that we can hire for SI? Okay, why are you doing this? Futurism also found that Sports Illustrated would regularly delete those authors and create new AI authors. [00:03:05] They even went as far as changing bylines on previous articles from the old authors to the new ones. They emphasized that SI never included any editors notes about the change of byline. Now, to me, they're in so deep that there were no editors notes that, hey, we're doing this. [00:03:24] I don't know that we'll get to that eventually. Like at the end of time, wow, wow. Look at the pictures. I feel like I know her. AI generated. Fortunately, the practice isn't exclusive to Sports Illustrated. [00:03:41] The Street. These are big time publications, folks. These are publications you know. The Street, a financial publication also owned by publisher, the Arena Group, also found to be engaging in the same practice. Futurism discovered in February that Men's Journal [00:03:58] published an AI generated article that was riddled with errors. You see, you can't replace human being. You can't. Sure, AI can recreate me. [00:04:13] Wouldn't that be annoying? Here she is again. She got endless energy. She's over there, she's everywhere. Maybe they want me to lose weight, no problem. But when you do that, who created the creation, okay? [00:04:30] Thinking people, even annoying people who aren't that bright, people. The energy, intelligence, lack thereof of people. Wow. [00:04:48] Not long after Futurism published the story, the Sports Illustrated Union released its own statement claiming they were not responsible for the creation of AI generated content. When your own employees rise up and put up something like this, you're on your own. [00:05:05] We, the workers of SI Union, are horrified by a story on the site Futurism reporting that Sports Illustrated, parent company, the Arena Group, has published AI generated content under SI's brand with fabricated bylines and writer profiles. [00:05:22] That's the aka they lied. If true, these practices violate everything we believe in about journalism. We deplore being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers. Si statement. We, the workers of the SI Union, [00:05:38] are horrified by the story on the site Futurism. It's actually ridiculous, Mayor. Comment on this quickly before I go to the final one. [00:05:56] This is an institutional real serious journalistic, long form pieces they do. This is some, what was the bicycle guy who lied all those years and won every race? >> Speaker 2: Armstrong. >> Speaker 1: That part. This is some Lance Armstrong stuff. [00:06:13] >> Speaker 2: It really is. And I think the fact about it is it's even a step further than Lance Armstrong. And I'll tell you why. Lance Armstrong was using genetic modified drugs or drugs to genetic modify him. Whatever he was doing, at least he was still him. In this case, there's no him or them or they, right? [00:06:30] It's just AI. And the scary part about this is, there's nobody to hold accountable for anything that's generated. There's no journalism in this. But if we get to the bottom of it, what it's truly about, it sounds like greed. You don't have to pay these people. [00:06:46] You don't have to pay any writers. And so anything that's generated, any resources that's generated off of this, income to renovate this, goes directly to this company. So I bet you, if we get to the byline or if we allow this to become the standard practice, we will have no journalists. [00:07:02] And that's okay with this company. That's what Sports Illustrated and their parent company is telling us. We don't care about the human part of writing. We don't care about the human part of journalists. We care about the profit. And we'll go to any means, even creating Mickey Mouse or someone who looks like a white version, blue eye, blonde hair, everybody to get that out for us. [00:07:21] And it's absolutely tacky in that aspect, for sure. >> Speaker 1: This is about money wanting to replace us. This one percentage, it might be half a percentage point. They've got everything. You've got nothing. And now they want to pull, I don't know, like jetsons or something. [00:07:38] If you think you can survive, which is AI generated joy, beauty, whatever, you're wrong, wrong. You're wrong. And it is just deplorable. And yes, I'm tired of saying SI, Mayor. [00:07:54] I'm trying to look now, okay? I'm tired of saying Sports Illustrated. What, two, three, four fools or the board? I don't want to disparage the board. I have no knowledge of this, no evidence. But who got together and said, let's keep this quiet. Let's do a case study and see if we lose people. [00:08:11] Stays the same. We could save a boatload of money. They've already laid people off tons over the years. But no, we want to be greedy we want more. Let's get more. You're gross. [00:08:27] Makes you say