Former Sports Illustrated employee calls out company for using AI-generated articles

Former Sports Illustrated employee calls out company for using AI-generated articles

Sports Illustrated has been in shambles recently for the accusations of using AI-made writers and AI-generated articles. Now, a former employee of SI has called the company out.

Sports Illustrated Union releases statement in response to AI allegations

It has been two years since writer Jessica Smetana left Sports Illustrated, and now it is probably for the better. Smetana is no stranger when taking shots at her former company.

Now, she is unwinding one of the biggest scandals journalism has seen in the modern era, as SI allegedly used AI-generated articles and people. Smetana isn’t all that surprised about the incident. In fact, she’s not surprised at all–she even expected it.

“It’s very depressing but totally expected given that I worked for these people and I know what the people who are in charge of this company are like,” Smetana said Wednesday on the Dan Le Batard Show.

“It’s entirely fair to not believe anything that they say because they have proven time and time again that they do not actually care about journalism, they don’t care about investing in journalism. They don’t care about having real people write stories.”

"It's very depressing but totally expected…It's entirely fair to not believe anything that they say because they have proven time and time again that they do not actually care about journalism." – @jessica_smetana on Sports Illustrated denying that they published articles… pic.twitter.com/gqpJeXoxOD

— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) November 29, 2023

Sports Illustrated fought back against the allegations against their company. Their union, in fact, released a statement regarding the incident.

Sports Illustrated Union releases statement in response to AI allegations

Our response to today’s story from @futurism reporting that The Arena Group has published AI-written stories by fake people under the Sports Illustrated name: pic.twitter.com/QcR4iGOi5w

— Sports Illustrated Union (@si_union) November 27, 2023

To give you a real inside look at what actually an AI-generated employee at Sports Illustrated is, it looks like this:

I mean come on … This is your best idea? And then you say this whole scandal is fake and try to cover it up. Really? I’m sure there is a Drew Ortiz out there somewhere, but you can clearly tell this is AI-generated. Even the biography. It’s ridiculous.

It’s not only ridiculous, but it’s frankly hilarious too. “He grew up in a farmhouse, surrounded by woods, fields and a creek.” That is the most common sentence known to mankind or in this sense AI. I just don’t get it at all. Why do this in the first place?

Not only is the AI profile laughable, but their response to the whole scenario. You deny the entire allegation and go out of your way to send a message to your community that it was fake. If someone has never heard of AI, they would probably ask: “Is this person actually human?” To answer that, no they’re absolutely not human.

Smetana isn’t surprised by the coverup either. She says that this is Sports Illustrated 101.

“If all of this is true,” she said. “Then the lengths they went to to try to pretend like, ‘None of this happened and we’re the good guys here,’ that’s just straight out of the Sports Illustrated management playbook.”

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