At Futurism.com, Maggie Harrison wrote a hilarious and pitiful story about Sports Illustrated allegedly using fake writers to publish AI-generated content:

“Drew Ortiz doesn’t seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he’s described as “neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes.”

Ortiz isn’t the only AI-generated author published by SportsIllustrated, according to a person involved with the creation of the content who asked to be kept anonymous to protect them from professional repercussions.

“There’s a lot,” they told us of the fake authors. “I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist.”

…

According to a second person involved in the creation of the Sports Illustrated content who also asked to be kept anonymous, that’s because it’s not just the authors’ headshots that are AI-generated. At least some of the articles themselves, they said, were churned out using AI as well.

“The content is absolutely AI-generated,” the second source said, “no matter how much they say that it’s not.”

Awesome! The story goes on to say that the AI-generated articles disappeared after SI was asked about them. One thing I can assure you is that Crossing Broad will never use fake writers or AI-generated content. All of this horse shit is written by an actual human.

But yeah, I’m old enough to remember when Sports Illustrated was one of the best publications out there. Then the Grant Wahl debacle happened and apparently they went the robot route. If any biological entities are still working there, they should jump ship ASAP.

For a second opinion, I asked an artificial intelligence about this topic:

There you have it. Full story here: