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Sports Illustrated, the US magazine, has removed online articles after Futurism found some of its “authors” were fake, complete with made-up biographies and AI-generated headshots.
Several articles for sporting product reviews were written by “Drew Ortiz”, described in his bio as a keen outdoorsman who spends his weekends “camping, hiking or back on his parent’s farm”.
“Drew” doesn’t appear to exist – and his headshot can be found on a website that sells AI-generated faces with the description: “Neutral white young-adult male”.
Sports Illustrated has now admitted after an internal investigation the articles (third-party content from Advon Commerce) were from “fake” authors but it insists the content itself was not AI-generated.
While the articles are strangely written, it’s generally impossible to verify if text is AI-generated.
AI images are getting better too – a recent study found that the most sophisticated AI-generated faces now look more convincing than real photos to most people.
Sports Illustrated got caught because the fake headshots could be found online elsewhere. There may be no smoking gun next time.